


Sinking Into Your Skin Beneath the Blood Red Sky

by leonidaslion



Series: Suite!verse [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold ..." -William Butler Yeats</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/9415.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [More Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/13379.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [Art + Fanmix](http://abendiboo.livejournal.com/13726.html") by abendiboo
> 
> [Vid](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyyQMBKWG3I) by loverstar  
> [Trailer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxN30zvGw8) by loverstar  
> [Vid 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJmC3R8PME4&feature=related) by loverstar
> 
> [Audiofic](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/category/seriessuiteverse) by juice817

For a time, Dean lives in the strange space between sleep and waking. On several occasions, he thinks that he _does_ wake, because the shitty motel rooms and the morgues and the diners fade into the golden cocoon of his bed.

Sam is inevitably there: body twined around Dean’s and mouth already at work on his skin. Sam’s power is coiled around his mind, leaving his thoughts too heavy and unorganized to make any kind of rational response, and he always ends up breathing shallowly while Sam’s lips and tongue and teeth mark possessive paths over his neck and chest and stomach. While Sam’s hands drag across his hips and ass and back, flooding him with memories of other, saner times.

“Love you,” Sam tells him in a low, honeyed voice. “So fucking beautiful, baby.”

Dean’s mouth drops open in a pant, he hears himself whine, and then the dreams pull him under again.

Things are more lucid there. He can sense his brother’s power all around him in a latticed cage, but it isn’t close enough to fuck with his thoughts. Drifting, he moves from motel to motel with his brother at his side. He and Sam sit in wayside diners while women who look like Jess, or Mom, or sometimes Cassie, bring them burgers and chili fries. Sam eats like he has never seen food before: with delicate, curious care. He watches Dean with ice blue, sorrowful eyes. When Dean tries to reminisce about some stupid, childish prank or another, Sam just tilts his head and blinks in confusion.

Eventually, he can’t ignore the truth anymore and the question spills out.

“Who are you really?”

They’re sitting in the Impala at the time, speeding along a dark highway toward no destination in particular. The radio is blaring out a garbled mix of Zeppelin and Metallica, like Dean’s subconscious can’t figure out what he wants to listen to.

“I’m here to help you,” Sam answers. His hands are meticulously placed on top of his thighs, his posture stiff. Almost like a puppet version of the real thing.

Dean tightens his grip on the wheel. “Not what I asked.”

Sam—or whatever is wearing Dean’s memory of his brother—regards him silently.

“Let me guess,” Dean says, once it has become clear Sam isn’t going to answer. “You’d tell me, but then you’d have to kill me?”

Sam doesn’t look like he gets the joke.

“The knowledge is not safe for you,” he says instead, and then the Impala disintegrates and they’re sitting on a beach.

Dean can’t see Sam anymore—isn’t looking into those unsettling, blue eyes—because his brother is sitting directly behind him, broad chest supporting Dean’s back. His arms are looped low around Dean’s stomach, keeping him close, but for the first time in a long time, there’s no restraining tension in the gesture. Before Dean, the ocean stretches out: splashed with gold by the first rays of the rising sun.

“I’ve never been here before,” Dean points out. He isn’t sure what that means, but it feels important because this is the first time in a seemingly endless succession of locales that he’s been somewhere unfamiliar. The beach doesn’t feel any less real than his memories, though. When he shifts his weight, the sand is a thick, shifting texture against his ass and the soles of his feet. He can taste salt on the air, hear the cry of gulls.

“I thought you would enjoy seeing this.” As the brisk ocean wind rises to ruffle Dean’s hair, Sam adds, “I thought you would enjoy being outside.”

The reminder makes Dean’s chest ache—God, how long has it been since he felt a genuine breeze on his face instead of one that is power-born?—and his eyes sting. But he’s never been an outdoorsy kind of a guy, and it’s a stupid thing to cry over, so he grits his teeth and says, “I’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more if there were a couple of beach bunnies running around. Maybe some Mai Tais?”

The knowing silence from behind him makes the joke fall flat. It strips Dean’s words bare and leaves the fear and the grief and the pain shivering and naked between them. Dean’s fine, though. He’s fine until Sam drops his head forward and rests their cheeks together. Loving. Chaste. Innocent.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” Sam whispers.

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He can’t talk past the painful lump in his throat, anyway. Staring out past the breaking waves at the blinding disc of the sun, which is slowly rising above the curve of the horizon, he blinks tears from his eyes. It doesn’t count as crying. Not if Sam’s behind him and can’t see.

“You have to be strong, Dean,” Sam tells him. “Help is coming.”

Dean can’t help but laugh at that: a harsh and bitter sound like a seagull’s cry. Help can come all it wants. It might even get to the front porch. Then Sam will open the door and slit its throat, or burn it to ash, or rip its heart from its chest.

Even if Help somehow managed to get past Sam, it still wouldn’t matter because Dean is tainted. He has been infected with Sam’s mark, and the yellow-eyed demon’s power, and his own limping, pathetic love. There isn’t any cure for that. There’s no saving him from himself.

As if his thoughts have summoned it back into being, Dean feels the tattoo unfold across his skin again. The bracelets melt into place around his wrists. Gold pulses at the corner of his vision—not from the sun, but from his brother’s power: confining and bright.

“Don’t think of him,” Sam urges.

“How the fuck am I supposed to manage that, huh?” Dean mutters. He wipes at his eyes with the back of one hand, as though that will stop the tears. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to wake up eventually, and he—he’s winning. Sooner or later, I’m just gonna …” He trails off, unable to say it.

Not that he needs to say it. The words echo through the air around them, painfully obvious. He can taste his own surrender coating the inside of his mouth. It’s a hot, thick sensation—carries the mingled flavors of tears and blood and come.

“No,” Sam says. His voice is uncharacteristically rough: almost violent. “I won’t let that happen, Dean.”

Dean laughs again, bowing his head and covering his face with both hands. “You can’t stop it.”

Sam is silent for a moment as the gulls wheel overhead and the waves break against the shore and then he asks, “Do you remember Burke Falls, Montana? You were hunting a revenant and Sam became lost in the mines.”

The half-formed memory of an interlocking cave network, twisted in on itself and chasm-pocked, flutters through Dean’s mind. Those dark flares are almost enough for him to drop his hands and open his eyes again, hungry for the light.

“He fell,” he whispers into his palms instead. “In the dark, he was—you were screaming for me, and I. I couldn’t find you.”

Dean’s throat locks up on him for a moment—remembered fear and adrenaline and panic: stench of rotting flesh everywhere, and drifting coal dust, and where the fuck was _Sammy_ —and then he wrenches his mind away from his own turbulent emotions and fixes on a bearded, glowering face. His throat loosens and he says, with false levity, “Dad was going fucking nuts.”

Sam strokes a hand through Dean’s hair and Dean can tell from the reassuring quality to the touch that he isn’t fooling anyone.

“You found him, though,” Sam says. “You found him and you carried him up out of the darkness.”

“Nearly got choked to death doing it, too,” Dean mutters, but he remembers that he didn’t mind at the time. There was too much relief flooding his system for Sam’s panicked arm around his throat and cutting off his air to really register. And if Sam was choking him—if Sam was clinging to him and shaking—then Sam wasn’t dead.

Sam’s hand shifts down, easing Dean’s hands away from his face and tilting his head to the side. Dean keeps his eyes shut as his brother’s breath warms his lips, chest tightening in anticipation of the kiss sure to follow, but nothing happens. Their lips are brushing—just barely—but for some reason Sam isn’t finishing it.

Finally, cautiously, Dean opens his eyes. He’s gotten used to ignoring the yellow in Sam’s gaze, but the blue is still too startling and new for that. The gentle, knowing sorrow in this Sam’s gaze is just as unsettling as the heat in the real Sam’s—is maybe a little worse. Dean quickly shuts his eyes again and breathes in—salt air, Sam, something else that smells a little like warm, polished wood. Church smell.

“You are lost now,” Sam whispers. “But I promise I will find you and raise you from the darkness.”

Now it will happen. Now Sam will move that final centimeter forward and kiss him.

But Sam doesn’t. His fingertips continue to trace across Dean’s cheek in light, reverent patterns, brushing his eyelashes and wiping away his tears. The air they share feels warm and spiced: the briny, coppery taste of surrender washing away. The waves seem miles distant, fading further with each beat of Dean’s heart.

“Are you real?” he chokes out suddenly. “Are you—are you him, or am I dreaming this? Because you can’t, you can’t _do_ this to me, man, I—”

“Dean,” Sam murmurs, soothing, and then, finally, they’re kissing.

Dean isn’t sure which of them took that final step, and he isn’t sure that it matters. After so many months with Sam’s bruising lips and claiming tongue, the gentleness of his mouth now makes Dean feel uncomfortable in his own skin. Part of him wants to take control of the kiss, turn it into something wet and hard, but he can’t figure out how. He can only meet his brother’s tenderness with a mirroring, languid rhythm.

There’s nothing sexual in the gesture, but Dean can feel it reverberating all the way down into his bones anyway—reaching deeper, even: into his soul. Sam’s mouth on his _(slight hint of tongue now, tracing over Dean’s parted lips)_ feels like worship, like sunlight, like clean water spilling over him and washing the filth and contamination of months away. It’s only a dream—only a fleeting illusion—but Dean is so pathetically grateful for it that he’s crying again.

 **I’m sorry,** a compassionate, sorrowing voice—a stranger’s voice, neither masculine nor feminine—murmurs in his head. **I should have been here sooner. I should have stopped him.**

Something in that voice, or maybe in the way Sam is tentatively pushing his tongue past Dean’s lips, makes Dean press closer. Twisting in his brother’s arms, Dean brings his arms up and grabs onto him with the desperation of a drowning man. He deepens the kiss, mouth open wide like he can breathe Sam in and keep him there.

There’s no warning.

One second, Sam’s lips are moist against Dean’s. His hair is soft beneath Dean’s fingers, and there’s a warm, unfolding feeling in Dean’s chest. The next, Dean is jerking away and screaming as pleasure-pain rips through his back.

 **Dean.** It’s Sam’s voice: Sam’s _real_ voice reverberating through the dream and his body and turning everything to molten gold. **Time to wake up.**

Hands clasp Dean’s arms and he cracks his eyes open to see his brother _(eyes all over blue—like ice, like sorrow, like regret)_ leaning over him.

“Have faith,” Sam tells him, and then something sharp and barbed hooks into Dean’s back and yanks him down through the sand and earth and into waking.

He opens his eyes with a gasp, writhing against silk sheets. His back burns, leaving him breathless and slicked with sweat, but somewhere along the way the pain signal must be getting lost because his cock is hard and full between his legs. It’s Sam’s power, he realizes—Sam’s power filling him up and moving within him and turning everything molten and thick.

Sam is inside him—everywhere—and the sensation is so invasive and overwhelming that it takes Dean a second to realize that his brother’s hands are on his arms, bruisingly tight. Sam’s body is blanketing his, bare chest to bare chest, and Sam’s tongue is in his mouth.

Dean jerks his head to the side, freeing his mouth, and lets out a hurt, shocked noise halfway between a gasp and a moan. The flood of power within him damps down instantly, going from a torrent to a trickle. It’s still stroking through Dean’s insides and along his back in licking drags like a giant cat’s tongue, but it’s more bearable.

Smiling, Sam releases one of Dean’s arms to pet his damp hair. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “You’re okay now. You’re here.”

Dean blinks up at his brother, trying to focus. His body is awash with conflicting reverberations—pain and pleasure all tumbled together so that he can’t tell whether he’s hurt or horny—and his mind feels like it’s been packed in cotton.

As Sam continues to stroke his hair, Dean focuses well enough to track the arousal to the lingering influence of his brother’s power. The muzziness and the aches in his muscles are his own, though: a familiar combination. This is what a hangover feels like. From either too much booze or drugs or sleep. Dean doesn’t remember drinking and there’s no reason for Sam to have dosed him with anything, not when he can fuck Dean’s body and mind up with a stray thought, which leaves only one option.

“How long was I out?” he asks. His voice comes out harsh and graveled from disuse, which tells him a little something already.

“Couple of weeks,” Sam answers—casually, like they do this all the time. Dean stares up at him, too stunned by the sudden loss of time to actually say anything, and after a beat Sam explains, “I needed some time to clean up.”

Dean swallows with difficulty, freeing his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and manages, “So you whammied me into a coma?”

“I helped you sleep,” Sam corrects. There’s no hint apology in the words: no regret in his golden gaze. “You needed it.”

Dean tries to feel violated—or at least upset—but after having spent so long in close quarters with his brother doing whatever he wants to Dean’s body _(short of fucking him, and Dean still doesn’t get the whys of that particular logic)_ , he can’t work up the proper emotions. After all, being put to sleep isn’t any worse than the daily games and manipulations he has to suffer through. At least in his sleep, Dean found a little escape…

“What were you dreaming about?” Sam prods. The words are empty, toneless. Which is enough of a warning for the lie to roll right off Dean’s tongue.

“Chili dog with all the trimmings. Extra oni—” He breaks off into a gasp as Sam’s power sharpens inside him, twisting. It feels so good it hurts, shooting past arousal and into agony, and Dean arches his back off the bed while grasping futilely at the sheets. Then the flood of power is gone, as suddenly as it came. Dean’s cock pulses, painfully hard and needy, and he moves to cup it.

Sam’s body is in the way, and when he feels Dean moving beneath him, Sam catches his wrist. The tension in his fingers is a warning.

“What were you dreaming?” he repeats.

Dean’s lizard brain is screaming at him to be smart and tell the truth, but his more rational mind understands that doing that would be a very bad idea. Gritting his teeth, he forces out, “That I won the Publisher’s Clearing House.”

Sam looks at him for a moment, blankly, and then says, “I can rip the answer out of your head or you can tell me. Your choice.”

“What the fuck do you care?” Dean demands. His heart is pounding in his chest, but he ignores the fear and pulls his wrist free. Pushing at his brother’s chest, he tries to move out from under him and then freezes when Sam shoves one arm between Dean’s back and the mattress and pulls them closer together instead.

“I was calling you,” Sam says as he nuzzles Dean’s neck. “For almost ten minutes. You weren’t waking up.” His teeth scrape over the sensitive skin of Dean’s throat, making Dean’s pulse skip. “So I want to know,” Sam continues. “I want to know what was so fucking fascinating that I had to tear you from your own mind.”

Even if he were oblivious enough to miss the seething jealousy in his brother’s words, there would be no way for Dean to miss the way that Sam’s mouth fastens on him suddenly. He hisses, instinctively trying to pull away again, and Sam’s free hand grips Dean’s hair and holds him still. The pressure of his mouth increases, working in a way that Dean is more than familiar with from before. Marking him.

 **Tell me,** Sam’s voice commands, echoing inside Dean’s head. His looming presence threatens to spill into Dean’s thoughts—to devour them—and Dean can’t remember exactly why right now, but that can’t happen. Bad Things will occur if it does.

“Y-you,” he spits out. “I was— _fuck_ —I was dreaming about you.”

He prays that the half-truth will be good enough to satisfy his brother. If it isn’t, and Sam insists on the entire story, then this conversation isn’t going to end well: whether the blue-eyed version of Sam was real or just a figment of Dean’s imagination, it wasn’t _this_ Sam, and that’s all he’s going to care about.

Dean swears softly as his brother’s teeth sink into the bruise, worrying at it for a moment, and then withdraw. Sam’s weight lifts as he rolls off of Dean and lies beside him, propped up on one elbow and watching as Dean brings a hand up to his throat and gingerly touches the mark with a wince. He’s surprised when there’s no trace of blood slicking his fingertips.

“You were dreaming about me,” Sam repeats, reaching out to trail his fingers up and down Dean’s chest. The mingled doubt and hope in his brother’s voice make Dean’s stomach move uneasily.

“Yeah,” he breathes.

“But not about me _now_ ,” Sam continues, sounding more certain. “You were remembering, weren’t you? You were dreaming about before.”

Sam’s power trickles along Dean’s back with the words, almost playfully, and now he’s remembering all right. He remembers kissing Sam, remembers the tattoo changing. He remembers Sam’s power slipping into him so gently and deftly that he didn’t really notice it happening—so that he hasn’t been able to understand what his brother was doing to him until now.

Hindsight is fifty-fifty, though, just like always, and from this vantage point Dean recognizes that the lazy, contented exhaustion that made him so pliant just before he drifted off was artificial. It was an invention of the insidious, soothing strokes of Sam’s power. Sam used that power to lull Dean into a false sense of security and warmth. He used it to make Dean obedient and submissive so that he could strip off his shirt and turn him over onto his stomach.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean whispers.

 _Now_ the feelings of violation come, strong and nauseating. He noticed before that he was shirtless—probably pantless too, judging from the way the sheets are rubbing against his cock and thighs—but he didn’t feel exposed until this moment of realization. His chest twists with the desire to tug the sheet up from where it’s pooled around his waist and use it to cover his body up to the neck.

As though his brother hasn’t spent the last two weeks getting as much of an eyeful as he wanted.

Sam’s mouth twitches into a smile, like he’s having no trouble tracing the abrupt shift of Dean’s mood to its source, and a moment later he confirms it by saying, “I wanted to see. You were being a stubborn asshole.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to fuck with my head!” Dean shouts. His muscles tense with the urge to thrash his way out of bed—away from Sam, as far as he can get in this prison—but he’s been here long enough by now to know better than to give in to that particular impulse.

Sam regards him with an amused, humoring expression, not bothering to respond, and it only twists the point home further—only makes Dean conscious of how fucking stupid that complaint is, when it’s all Sam ever does. When his entire purpose these days seems to be tweaking Dean’s thoughts until they come more in line with what Sam wants from him. Of course, knowing it’s a stupid complaint doesn’t mean he isn’t still going to protest.

“You were—you fucking _drugged_ me.”

“Oh please,” Sam scoffs. He tilts his head, circling the fingers on Dean’s chest in toward one nipple. “So I gave you the psychic equivalent of a Zanax. So fucking what.”

Pushing Sam away isn’t just stupid—it’s pointless—but Dean does it again and, surprisingly, Sam lets him. Emboldened by the small success, Dean shakes his head and says, “That wasn’t Zanax; that was a fucking roofie, or a lobotomy or something.”

“I mellowed you out, Dean. That’s it. The rest was all you.”

No. That can’t be true. Because if it is … if it is, then Dean’s even further gone than he thought.

 _I’m not,_ he tries to reassure himself. _I’m fine._ But he can’t deny that he kissed Sam before his two-week long nap. He kissed his little brother of his own free will; he, in some small measure, _accepted_ this ruined, soul-dead version of Sammy. He accepted this life, this reality, and that acceptance went deep enough to trigger a change in whatever possessive spell Sam has inked into his skin.

That bitter taste of surrender—the one that was so close in his dreams—surges in his mouth and the room starts to slip sideways. Why the fuck is Dean even bothering to fight, when the final outcome is as inevitable as sunset? Why shouldn’t he make it easier on himself—give in, give up, let Sam’s numbing, erotic pull draw him in and consume him? He can feel himself hovering on the brink of offering that—feels the tattoo prickle in warning on his back, signaling a new change—and then ice blue eyes flash through his mind, cold and shocking.

Help is coming, that Sam said—no, _promised_. Dean isn’t sure if he believes the dream, but he doesn’t quite disbelieve it enough to toss in the towel.

Not yet.

He swallows thickly, giving his head a shake, and announces, “You aren’t getting any more of me.”

Sam just smiles at him fondly. Like he’s being cute.

“I mean it, Sam.”

Chuckling, Sam drops a brief kiss on Dean’s cheek and then rolls away toward the far side of the bed. “Get dressed,” he says, and then lifts up the curtain and is gone.

Dean lies where he is and stares at the fabric, debating ignoring the command and staying where he is. In the end, though, it doesn’t seem worth fighting over—especially not when Dean actually wants to get some more layers between himself and his brother.

His cock hasn’t quite settled back down yet from the over stimulation he woke up to, which is shaming and embarrassing, but there’s no point in trying to hide his erection. After all, Sam already knows how it makes Dean feel to have all that power moving inside of him. Dean’s just going to have to move quickly: get the clothing on as rapidly as possible. Leaving the sheets where they are, he sits up and scoots over to the edge of the bed.

The room is still a mess when Dean moves the curtain aside—floor cracked and walls runneled as though they’re made of melted wax instead of plaster and concrete. There are red stains everywhere, reminders of Sam’s torture spree, but at least there’s no actual meat embedded in the walls or ceiling anymore. The gaping hole in the outer wall has been covered with a black, plastic tarp that moves with an unseen wind. The lights overhead have been fitted with new bulbs.

Sam is already dressed and sitting in an oversized armchair that Dean recognizes from his brother’s study. There’s a book in his lap—something old and demony, probably—and he continues to page through it as Dean tentatively gets to his feet.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Dean mutters, earning himself an amused glance. The glance catches on his body and heats, Sam’s eyes flicking from his thighs to his chest and then back down to his cock. Dean turns away immediately, flushing and berating himself for opening his mouth. He wonders if he’s ever going to learn to keep his trap shut.

Probably not.

Now that Dean has called attention to himself, Sam’s eyes follow him over to the wardrobe—the same one as before, judging by the warped wood. The regard makes Dean even more eager to get some clothing on and his palms are covered with a light sheen of sweat as he tugs the door open. He starts to reach in as soon as there’s room to do so and then, as the door swings wider and he gets a look at what he’s groping for, stops and stares.

For a long moment, he doesn’t move. Sam’s eyes are still crawling over him from behind, but Dean’s too stunned to care. He starts to turn around with a question on his lips, then stops, rethinking the impulse. After a few more moments of hesitation, he grabs a pair of sweats from one of the shelves. A baggy hoodie follows—sleeves long enough that Dean has to push them halfway up his arms to keep his hands free.

When he’s finally dressed, and feeling more protected than he has in a long time, he frowns down at himself. There’s a catch here somewhere. He just can’t see it.

Sam is still watching him when he turns around, the book forgotten in his lap.

“What are you doing?” Dean demands.

Sam rests his head against the high back of the chair and tilts it slightly, getting comfortable. “Looking at you.”

“That’s not—” Dean clenches his jaw, because of course that isn’t what he means: Sam knows that, he doesn’t have to point it out for his brother. “The clothes are gone,” he says instead. “All the suits, and the jeans, and the shirts. You swapped out fucking Armani for Big and Tall’s athletic department!” He picks at the front of the hoodie, even more agitated by the realization that there’s a part of him that’s abjectly uncomfortable in the baggy clothing. “What _is_ this, Sam?”

“You didn’t like the old clothes,” Sam replies. His tone is filled with innocent confusion, but the smile playing around the corners of his lips is more than enough to tell Dean that he’s being toyed with.

“You never cared about that before,” he shoots back. “So what the fuck are you doing?”

Sam studies him for a long moment, amusement slowly seeping from his face. Dean’s sure the new expression isn’t an improvement. Finally, with casual bluntness, Sam says, “I don’t want anyone else looking at what’s mine.”

“You don’t—” It’s probably the last thing Dean expected to hear, leaving him too startled to swallow his disbelieving laugh. “I’m trapped in the fucking suite, Sam: who the hell is gonna look at me?”

“I had some people shipped in to fix everything,” Sam answers calmly. “They’ll be starting today.”

Dean’s thoughts stumble to a disorganized stop.

Finally, after several minutes of numb shock, he gets his mouth working again and says, “People? You mean, like, _human_ people? Without demons riding around inside of them?”

One corner of Sam’s mouth twitches up. “Human people,” he confirms. “Demons don’t exactly spend their time studying home repair books.”

“Well, chalk one up for the meat suits.” Dean’s grinning, chest going light and excited as the shock wears off. It’s pathetic to be so thrilled about rubbing elbows with a couple of average Joes he doesn’t even know, but—but _God_ , he can’t remember ever being so relieved.

“Unfortunately,” Sam says, reclaiming Dean’s attention, “I can’t move you. And I can’t stay here with you, either. I have things to do.”

Dean’s smile slips a little beneath Sam’s solemn regard. His heart, which was racing with hopeful anticipation, trips. His stomach hollows with knowing dread.

“That’s okay,” he says, trying to keep whatever’s coming at bay for just a little longer. “I’ll amuse myself somehow.”

“The clothes are a start,” his brother continues, as though Dean never said anything. “But I need to be sure you’re safe.”

Dean’s mouth has gone dry. The hopeful flurry of activity in his chest has damped and gone dark. “And how are you going to do that?” he rasps.

Sam’s eyes cut to the side, toward the place where Dean knows the coffee table is. Dean’s view is blocked by the back of the couch from this angle, but he already knows that he isn’t going to like whatever is there. There’s a retarded, endlessly optimistic part of his head that’s telling him that if he doesn’t move—if he doesn’t see—he won’t have to deal with it. But that’s the worst kind of hope-bearing lie, and Dean ignores it as he steps forward with a dragging weight in his stomach. The edge of the table comes into view first—thick, congealed smears of blood marring the polished surface, but that can’t be what Sam’s ... Oh. Oh fuck.

“No,” he says, freezing in place. “No fucking way.”

“It’s only while I’m away,” Sam tells him, sitting forward in the chair again. “I’ll take it off when I come home.” He’s looking at Dean earnestly, like he actually expects that to help, and anger licks through Dean’s horror just enough to get him moving again.

“I’m not a fucking dog!” he yells, taking several skittish steps back. He doesn’t know where he thinks he’s going, can’t run anywhere, but the nervous energy thrumming through him leaves him desperate to try.

“No, you aren’t,” Sam agrees. “But you _are_ mine, Dean, and I need to make sure they know that. I need to keep you safe.”

Dean stares at his brother for a long moment while conflicting thoughts and emotions twist inside of him and send out panicked orders to run or fight. As though either attempt will end with him anything but even more fucked than he already is.

Finally, he opens his mouth and says it.

“I’m not wearing a collar.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just a symbol.” Sam’s voice is gentle; his face calm. Like this really isn’t anything to him—just another day in the Winchester household.

“Why the fuck don’t you just have ‘Property of Sam Winchester’ tattooed on my forehead and get it over with?” Dean snaps, voice harsh with mingled anger and fear. His stomach is leaden with shame at the thought of letting this happen—of letting Sam treat him like some kind of pet, like a fucking piece of property.

Sam just smiles at him placidly.

Shaking a little with the violence of his emotions, Dean growls, “You want to put that fucking thing around my neck, and you’re gonna have to do it yourself, Sam. And I swear to God I will fight you every step of the way.”

“We could do that,” Sam agrees, nodding and folding his hands in his lap. “But as much as you like to believe otherwise, I don’t actually like forcing you into things.”

Sam’s right, Dean doesn’t believe him. He lets out an incredulous little snort, tensing his muscles in preparation of fighting his brother—of making Sam work for this new exercise in humiliation.

“So you have a choice here,” Sam continues. “We can do it your way, or …”

Dean wants to keep his mouth shut and wait Sam out—doesn’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of asking—but his brother keeps looking at him, expectant. And now that Sam has showed his hand, Dean can’t deny that he desperately wants to know what’s behind door number two. It can’t possibly be worse than door number one.

“Or what?” he bites out finally.

“Or, you can convince me that you don’t need the collar.”

Dean opens his mouth to demand just how he’s supposed to do that and then shuts it again. He doesn’t have to ask. He can read the answer in his brother’s gaze. In the smug, self-satisfied way that Sam is smiling.

He knows that he should throw that offer right back in Sam’s face—and there’s a large part of him that wants to. Not just because the thought of doing what Sam wants makes him cringe, but because he can tell from his brother’s expression that Sam has deliberately set him up—Sam fucking _knows_ Dean isn’t ever going to chose being treated like a dog over a little heavy petting—and he doesn’t want to let the son of a bitch get away with it. Distasteful as the prospect is, Dean knows what his response should be: denial, defiance, resistance.

The correct choice is the collar.

But instead, he asks, “How much?”

Sam’s smile widens, which makes Dean’s hands clench in futile anger. If he had any doubts before that he was playing right into his brother’s hands, they’re gone now.

“Just a kiss,” Sam tells him.

Dean cuts his eyes away: can’t meet his brother’s gaze anymore. He’s too angry, and too shamed, and too confused. Because there’s a part of him that’s already on its knees and halfway across the room on its way to Sam. There’s a part of him that’s going warm and flushed with gratitude at having been given this out—the excuse of necessity to cover up the fact that he wants, badly, to give what Sam is demanding.

And Sam, the smug bastard, knows it.

“Your choice, Dean.”

“Can’t you just … I don’t know, lock me in the study or something?” God, Dean can’t believe he’s making _suggestions_.

“I could,” Sam agrees. “But I thought you wanted to see some people. Hear a few human voices.”

Fucker. Dean shudders a little with the sick swell of rage inside his chest. It’s ingenious, really: how well Sam has him caught. How perfectly he laid out all the breadcrumbs and how stupidly Dean followed along.

Throat working around the thick lump of emotion clogging his airway, Dean considers the prospect of saying no. He imagines how the collar will feel around his neck: smooth, heavy metal. It’ll be tight, of course: tight enough that he’ll feel it every time he swallows. Tight enough to remind him with every breath just whom he belongs to. And Sam is going to hold Dean down while he puts it on, and then he’s going take what he wants from Dean anyway: is going to hold him still and kiss him until Dean doesn’t know what’s up or down any longer and starts to respond.

Or.

Or Dean can accept the fact that he has been outmaneuvered _(again)_ and go over there of his own free will and kiss his brother. One kiss. Nothing that he hasn’t already done.

 _Yeah, and what’s it gonna do to you this time?_ he asks himself, muscles in his back twitching in remembrance of the last kiss he initiated. But the question doesn’t ring true, and he dismisses it in the next instant.

Somehow, he knows that another kiss isn’t going to be enough to tip whatever mystical scales he’s balancing on. It isn’t the act that’s the problem, he senses, but the intent. The tattoo isn’t waiting for him to rack up kisses like free throws from the sidelines: it’s looking for shifts in thinking. It’s waiting for his thoughts to fall in line, one by one. As far as the tattoo goes, proving himself to Sam the way his brother wants him to is harmless enough.

That still doesn’t mean he should do it.

“One more minute, Dean,” Sam says, interrupting his thoughts. “Then you’re wearing the collar whether you want to or not.”

Dean’s mouth floods with bitter iron as he steps forward. He can’t look at his brother as he approaches—if he looks he’s going to run instead, useless as it would be—so he stares at the floor instead. He watches the maroon and black stains left by Sam’s last tantrum move past: a map of death and pain. Then Sam’s long, jean-clad legs come into view and Dean freezes, heart rattling out a sharp, staccato beat and throat closing up on him.

Oh God, he can’t fucking _do_ this.

“Dean,” Sam murmurs. “Look at me.”

Dean’s head gives a curt shake without his permission and he clenches his hands into fists. Sam might know just how cowed he is, but that doesn’t mean Dean has to give his brother the satisfaction of seeing him act like some terrified, submissive chick. Taking a shaky breath, he raises his head and meets his brother’s gaze. The unashamed heat he finds there makes his stomach cramp with nausea, but Dean can live with that. His tattered pride can live with that.

Dean meets his brother’s eyes while he hesitates, uncertain of how to proceed. After a moment, he starts to bend forward and then straightens again. He can’t kiss Sam from this angle. Not “convincingly”. He waits for Sam to take pity on him and stand up, but Sam doesn’t move.

“I don’t,” Dean starts, and then grimaces, annoyed at having to say it aloud. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“If you don’t know, then you aren’t ready,” Sam replies, which is a bunch of cryptic bullshit and only frustrates Dean more. “You can wear the collar today, and we’ll try this again tomorrow.”

He stretches his hand out for the collar, which obediently starts to slide across the coffee table toward him, and Dean panics. He moves without thinking—letting instinct ride him, letting his body do what feels natural—and ends up in the chair with Sam, straddling his brother’s lap. Distantly, past the deafening pound of his own heartbeat, he can hear Sam’s startled gasp and the low hum of power his brother was using to move the collar cuts off.

“Maybe you _are_ ready,” Sam murmurs, sliding one hand up underneath the hoodie to brush along Dean’s side.

Dean stiffens for a moment—mind screaming at him to pull away from the touch, from his brother—and then forces his muscles to relax. As he sinks down more solidly, the edges in his chest shift, tainting the nervousness and turning it to something resembling anticipation.

It’s an awkward position—his knees are digging into the seatback, wedged in between the arms on either side of his brother’s hips—but Sam makes an appreciative noise and puts his other hand on Dean’s upper thigh. Sliding a little lower in the chair, Sam gives Dean’s knees more room and slots their bodies more firmly together.

Suddenly, Sam's cock is wedged up against Dean’s ass, noticeable even through the layers of cotton and denim, and the pressure reminds Dean of other times he’s straddled his brother’s body. Memories of sinking down onto Sam’s cock—of riding him until they were both sore and sweat-soaked—flutter through Dean’s mind and his own cock swells where it’s pushing against Sam’s stomach.

Maybe he should have chosen the collar after all.

“Mmm,” Sam purrs appreciatively as he nuzzles at Dean’s throat. “That’s nice, isn’t it?” His left hand slides up and down Dean’s thigh, stroking through the cotton, while his right moves from Dean’s side to his back, setting off flickers of memory inside his head.

Sam playing with a stolen ball by a rusting chain-link fence.

Sam blowing bubbles in his milk until it froths over the side of the glass and runs down onto the table.

Sam sliding into bed with him— _I had a nightmare, Dean, I’m scared_ —and curling around him like a snake.

Sam Sam Sam SamSamSamSamSam

“Now,” Sam breathes, his voice brushing warmly against Dean’s cheek. “Convince me.”

Yes.

Dean jerks his head to the side and catches his brother’s lips. For once, Sam isn’t demanding. He’s almost passive, his lips slightly parted but otherwise making Dean work for it. Asking Dean to convince him. But Dean isn’t thinking about the collar as he uses his lips and tongue to force his brother’s mouth open wider and then licks his way inside.

Sam moans around Dean's tongue, hands tightening convulsively on his body. He thrusts up once, hard, riding the crease of Dean’s ass through the layers of clothing, and the insinuation floods Dean’s groin with heat. He gasps, hands coming up to tangle in Sam’s hair and hold him still while he surges forward, deepening the kiss.

When Sam thrusts up again, Dean thoughtlessly rocks down against him before rubbing his own cock forward against his brother’s stomach. Sam adjusts his hold on Dean’s body, pushing against the small of his back and helping him get the angle he needs, and Dean moans softly into his brother’s mouth.

He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing anymore, or why, but he knows that it feels good. It feels _right_. And the steady press of Sam’s hand on his back is filling him with so many memories: so much duty and trust and above all else love.

Awash with both memory and sensation, it takes Dean a while to realize that something is off. Sam’s mouth is hotter than it should be, and it tastes like honey and roses. It tastes golden.

The memory of his fateful kiss with Lilith rises briefly in Dean’s mind, only to be washed away in a flood of SamSamSam as his brother’s left hand joins his right on the bare skin of Dean’s back. He still knows that something is wrong—that this has gone way past a simple kiss and he’s done now, he can stop and he doesn’t have to wear the collar—but he can’t bring himself to back off.

Truth be told, he doesn’t really _want_ to stop because Sam is kissing him back now, and both of Sam’s hands are on the tattoo, and Sam’s cock is a hot bulge against his ass, and Dean has the perfect angle for rutting his own erection against Sam’s stomach, and he wants, he wants more, wants everything.

Sam moves suddenly, pushing forward and standing up, and Dean wraps his legs around his brother’s waist without a second thought. Sam’s hands leave the tattoo to cup his ass, supporting Dean as he carries him across the room. There’s a ripping sound and a flutter of cloth—the canopy coming down—and then Sam is lowering Dean down onto the bed and following, using his weight to press Dean down onto the mattress.

They’re still kissing, mouths all but welded together, and Dean laps more eagerly at that taste—that sweet, sweet taste that fills his mouth and runs down his throat like fire. He thrusts up against Sam, mindlessly, and groans into the kiss as Sam shifts so that their cocks are rubbing together in all the right ways.

 _More,_ Dean thinks, and _I want_ , and then Sam is pulling away, damn him, and Dean makes a protesting little sound in the back of his throat.

Or he tries to, anyway.

He comes out of the lustful haze immediately, flooded with cold everywhere but his throat, where all of the warmth he drank down from Sam is coiled. Gripping his throat with one hand, he stares up at his smiling brother.

 _Sam,_ Dean tries to say, straining after the word, and there’s still nothing. Nothing but that warmth, and a taste like honey and roses, and Sam can’t fucking do this to him. He can’t take away Dean’s only remaining weapon.

Panicked, Dean thrashes out, trying to get away, only to still almost immediately as Sam’s power enfolds him. Breathing hard, Dean watches while Sam leans in to nose at his cheek. A moment later, there’s a soft brush of lips as Sam kisses him before whispering, “I told you: I need you to be safe. Even from yourself.”

 _You son of bitch!_ Dean rails silently, trying to project the words so that Sam will hear them. _Fucking asshole!_

Sam must be listening, because he chuckles. “Oh, come on, Dean. You’re smarter than that. Deep down, you knew it couldn’t be that easy. You just pretended it was so you had an excuse.”

The echo of his earlier thoughts comes as a slap. It hurts, humiliating, and Dean’s eyes burn with tears he refuses to shed.

“Shh, baby,” Sam soothes. Gripping Dean’s hip with one hand, he uses the other to tilt Dean’s head back and begins to press open-mouthed, wet kisses along Dean’s jaw and down to his throat. His hips roll, grinding their cocks together and driving all of the breath from Dean’s lungs in a soundless grunt.

Dean has been at Sam’s mercy ever since that night in the graveyard, but he’s never felt quite so powerless before. Sam's always respected his wishes, more or less. He's stopped when Dean told him to. But now Sam has stolen his voice, and all of Dean’s ‘no’s are stuck in his chest. He’s grown accustomed to being unable to resist Sam’s advances, but he didn’t know until this moment how much he was relying on being able to protest them.

“I didn’t want to do this to you,” Sam murmurs as he kisses his way across Dean’s throat. “But we both know that you can’t keep that lovely mouth of yours shut, and I couldn’t have you spreading nasty rumors about me.”

Even through the burning humiliation and fear and anger, Dean senses the truth behind his brother’s words. Sam doesn’t have anything to be worried about, as far as Dean can tell, but for some reason he still doesn’t want Dean sending messages to the outside world. Particularly, Dean guesses, Sam doesn’t want him talking to Bobby and the others, who are locked only a few floors away and are probably far less isolated than Dean is.

But that isn’t the whole picture, or even most of it. It isn’t the driving force behind Sam’s decision to muzzle Dean like this. No, that lies in the way Sam is holding him so close, and marking his throat up so thoroughly.

Taking Dean’s voice is just one more way to own him: to keep him from reaching out and connecting with anyone who isn’t Sam.

“I’ll be back tonight,” Sam promises, moving up from Dean’s throat finally and cradling Dean’s face in both hands. “Then you can give me another kiss and take your voice back.”

He kisses Dean one last time—on the mouth this time, hungry and deep—and then gets up. The restraining power lifts as he gets off the bed, leaving Dean free to scramble up into a sitting position. He freezes before he’s gotten more than halfway up on one elbow, cock tenting his sweats and face flushed, and shuts his eyes. When he opens them again a moment later, nothing has changed.

The door to the suite stands open. The demon who was bringing Sam his victims during his little torture spree two weeks ago is standing just inside the room, and seven men—heavy collars around their necks, and tool belts around their waists—stand behind her.

The men aren’t looking at Dean with such painful obviousness that he knows they were watching a moment before. The only remaining question is just how long they’ve been there—how much they’ve seen. But Dean guesses that he knows the answer to that one as well, because he would have heard the door opening if they’d come in after Sam put a stop to their impromptu make-out session.

Which means they saw him kissing Sam willingly. Saw him needy and gasping for it like bitch in heat—legs wrapped around his brother’s waist and hands tangled in Sam’s hair, keeping him close.

Oh God.

“Have them start with the window,” Sam orders, straightening his shirt and adjusting his cock in his pants.

The dark-haired demon nods. “Should I have dinner waiting when you come back?”

“No,” Sam answers with a curt shake of his head. “I won’t be hungry. Get my brother anything he wants, though.”

Dean’s stomach lurches with shamed embarrassment, but the men don’t react to Sam’s words. Maybe they haven’t connected ‘brother’ with the guy Sam was making out with a moment ago. Or maybe incest doesn’t rate quite so high on the atrocity scale these days.

Dean flinches, startled, as Sam’s hand brushes his face. It isn’t more than an attention-getting gesture, but Dean’s had enough of Sam touching him for now and jerks away, crawling up to the head of the bed to put some distance between them. Sam’s eyes soften for a moment, hurt, but the emotion is quickly hidden as he glances over at the workmen.

“Any of you touch him and I promise you’ll live more than long enough to regret it,” he announces, voice cold. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, master.” It’s a dull, lifeless response, spoken in eerie unison, and the submissiveness makes Dean shiver.

“Good,” Sam says dismissively, turning back to Dean.

He just looks for a moment, expressionless, and then there’s a flicker of darker gold in his eyes. It’s just enough warning for Dean to begin to tense before his brother’s power enfolds him, slick and warm on his skin like scented oil. He turns his face to the side, resting his cheek against the headboard and squeezing his eyes shut as he presses one hand against his aching cock.

Sam chuckles warmly where he’s standing at the foot of the bed and then Dean grimaces as a phantom pair of lips push against his. It’s gentle, chaste and loving, but Dean’s far too aware of their audience to feel anything but shame. Finally, after far too long a moment, the illusion fades and Sam’s power releases him.

“Be back soon, baby,” his brother says. His voice sounds soft and a little sad, but Dean refuses to acknowledge the farewell, keeping his eyes closed and his face turned away.

After a few silent minutes, he hears Sam move away. There’s more shuffling as the men move out of Sam’s path, and then the quiet click of the door shutting, and Sam is gone.

His silent, hurt departure probably shouldn’t make Dean feel so much like running after him to apologize, but it does anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean might as well not be in the room as far as the workmen are concerned. They go about their assigned task with downturned eyes and lowered voices, never so much as glancing toward the bed. The demon, on the other hand, seems fascinated by him: bitch won’t stop staring. Dean’s pretty sure that Sam wouldn’t approve, but as uncomfortable as the attention is making him, he isn’t going to be the one to tell his brother.

He can’t be responsible for any more screams.

Besides, Dean has gotten used to being looked at since he first woke in his cage, and his brother’s steady regard is way more uncomfortable than this bitch’s. He can deal. Just as long as she stays over by Sam’s chair the way she has been.

It takes Dean a while to recover from the shame of his brother’s display _(Dean refuses to own any part of it; Sam was using his powers again, he must have been)_ and from his own nonsensical guilt over his behavior during Sam’s goodbye, but eventually he finds himself uncurling a little as he watches the men—humans, clean and unridden.

There are seven of them, and Dean, giddy with relief, finds himself thinking of them as the seven dwarves. Doc wears a thick, wide-rimmed pair of glasses. Bashful isn’t so much blushing as continuously flushed: sweat beads on his brow and rolls down the back of his neck to wet his shirt. Happy wears a wide grin, courtesy of a little artistic work that someone _(some_ demon _, probably)_ did at the corners of his mouth. Sneezy is a twitchy, small man with a notched nose that looks like it has been repeatedly broken and haphazardly healed. Grumpy is the oldest: iron grey hair and a scowl twisting his thick lips. Sleepy’s right eyelid has melted down over his eye: the entire right side of his face is grooved with deep scars.

Dopey is the best looking of the lot, and Dean guesses the guy probably got his share of women back in the day. Dopey doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t talk. Dean guesses the man might actually be a deaf mute: he keeps using a pencil and a pad of paper to communicate with his fellow dwarves.

As Dean watches, Dopey scribbles a new note and passes it to Grumpy. Their fingertips brush casually as Grumpy takes it and Dean’s body gives an electric, hungry shiver. It’s been so long since he was touched like that. So long since human eyes met his, since human voices washed over him.

There’s a scent, he realizes, or maybe it’s actually the absence of a scent. Whatever it is, the room smells different with the men here and Sam gone. It smells fresher. Less like old blood and madness.

The bed dips to Dean’s left and he does a quick count of the men over by the window before concluding that the bitch wasn’t content to keep her distance and watch after all. He tenses but doesn’t move. She isn’t going to touch him. She isn’t.

Sam wouldn’t have left her here to play watchdog if he hadn’t been absolutely sure of her, right?

“What do you want for breakfast?”

Dean’s stomach rumbles audibly at the suggestion of food, but he shakes his head anyway, eyes still locked on the men working on the window. He can’t eat with them here. He’s too wound up to be able to keep anything down.

“Dean,” the demon prods. He expects a threat in her tone, but instead the bitch’s voice is gentle. Coddling.

Dean flushes with mingled anger and embarrassment. As if Sam hasn’t already singled him out enough, now he has to deal with this bitch treating him like some pampered Chihuahua. The workers still aren’t looking at him, but Dean can tell from the way they’re suddenly overly absorbed in the floor and the wall that they’re paying attention. Clenching his jaw, he lifts one hand and gives his watchdemon the finger.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she replies wryly. “You haven’t eaten in two weeks. Sam’s good with those powers of his, but even he can’t bring your metabolism to a standstill. Besides, I seem to remember you stuffing your face every chance you could get.”

That brings Dean’s eyes over despite his best intentions, because the words indicate that he _knows_ this demon. There’s a limited pool for him to choose from on that scale, and with the yellow-eyed demon out of the picture and Meg dead, only one real suspect.

This is the black-eyed bitch who started Sam down this blood-soaked path in the first place. The one who showed up after Dean made his deal and lured Sam to her side with promises of salvation.

Lying cunt.

She smiles at his glare, amused and slightly mocking. “I see you remember me. The name’s Ruby, by the way. I don’t think we were ever properly introduced.”

They weren’t, but now that Dean is thinking about it he remembers hearing that name. He heard it nearly nonstop for the first six months after his deal, before the bloom wore off this particular nightshade and Sam started to realize that she didn’t know how to save Dean anymore than he did.

Dean remembers the day Sam finally accepted that. He remembers his little brother ranting and sobbing and hurling furniture around the room. Remembers grabbing Sam mid-stride and hauling him close, while Sam continued to shout swears and futile curses.

He sort of wants to put a bullet in her for hurting Sam like that. Not that he’s allowed a gun anymore.

“So, pancakes? Waffles? Eggs and a couple slabs of pig lard?”

Dean sits up and swings his legs off the side of the bed before he can give in to the violent impulses running through him. Punching Ruby isn’t going to save Sam. Isn’t going to turn back the clock on this disaster. It isn’t even going to make him feel any better. Not really.

“Look, Dean, I don’t like this any more than you do, but Sam left me to look after you, and—”

“We need some materials.”

Dean’s head snaps up fast enough from the patch of floor he was staring at that his neck cracks audibly. Grumpy is only three feet away, one of Dopey’s pieces of paper in his hand. He’s staring steadily past Dean at Ruby, like Dean isn’t even there. Like he’s invisible. Or worse, like he’s just another piece of expensive furniture.

“So?” Ruby says. Her voice is about fifty degrees colder than it was when she was talking to Dean a moment ago. Dangerous. “You know where the door is. Go give your shopping list to the nice demon down the hall.”

“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t think we were trying to escape.”

Dean isn’t sure, but he thinks that Grumpy is deliberately trying to piss Ruby off. He didn’t actually need another reason to like the man—just the fact that he’s human and not possessed is enough—but that kind of gumption is difficult not to admire. If it is gumption. Dude might just be suicidal—might be looking for a quick way out, not that Dean would blame him.

Ruby gives a huff and the bed bounces as she climbs across it, close enough that her arm brushes one of the ridiculously large sleeves of Dean’s hoodie. Snatching the paper, she sends Grumpy staggering backward a few steps with a stray slap of power. This close, the flare resonates through Dean and makes the wall in his mind quiver alarmingly. He thinks he catches a gleam of gold at the corner of his vision—the yellow-eyed demon’s power leaking out into his mind, into his soul—and then Sam’s protective barrier strengthens again.

“You want to think before you come that close to Samuel’s consort again,” Ruby announces.

Dean’s stomach twists. It’s one thing to know that these men saw him and Sam kissing, and another thing completely to hear it given a name. Is that what he is? A fucking _consort_? Because consort implies some kind of equality, doesn’t it? It implies free will and choice.

It implies that you’re talking about a person and not a possession.

“Yes, ma’am,” Grumpy agrees, and something about that strikes Dean as unbearably funny: calling this demon bitch ‘ma’am’, like she’s someone’s mother. Like she’s a _person_.

He can’t laugh like this, not with Sam’s power closing his throat to everything but air, but his body is doing its best anyway. He thinks of how he must look, bent over with his shoulders shaking silently, and understands instantly that he must look like he’s crying. That sobers him—he doesn’t want these men to think he’s that weak and broken, even if it’s true—and he sits back up, pressing his lips together against the hysteria.

Ruby stays kneeling beside Dean until Grumpy has returned to his comrades and then lets out a tiny snort, flopping sideways on the bed. When Dean glances over, he finds her sprawled on her side with one elbow propping her up. She’s looking at him like they’re friends: like they’re two teenaged girls at a slumber party.

“You humans are so fucking pushy,” she announces, tilting her head to one side with a slight smile. “Good thing I’m such a soft touch.”

Dean isn’t sure whether that’s supposed to be a joke or not—demons have the most fucked up senses of humor and Dean’s own radar has been knocked askew over the past few months. He doesn’t know why he’s even trying to figure that out: what does it matter whether Ruby’s joking or not? It isn’t like he’s going to give her a high five, or laugh or smile at her. She’s a fucking _demon_ , she’s the enemy, and as he looks at her he feels that dark, splintered place inside of him light.

It’s a wan light—flickering—but it’s still _there_ , and he finds himself thinking of exorcisms, and of how best to incapacitate without killing, and of the lines of devil’s traps. He finds himself thinking of black smoke boiling out of throats and funneling back down to Hell: thinks of what it was like to watch the yellow-eyed demon die in that dark, lightning-shocked graveyard.

He doesn’t feel his expression change, but Ruby’s smile fades and she slides off the bed and away from him. Her throat is twitching in a way that Dean associates with nerves, and it makes him straighten. Makes him feel, briefly, like himself again.

“So you are still in there,” Ruby says. Her voice is low, pitched for Dean’s ears alone. “I didn’t know if you would be.” Her mouth twists into a wry expression. “To be honest, I thought you’d be licking Sam’s boots like a good dog by now. No offense—I mean, I’m glad you’re not, but Sam can be pretty persistent when he wants something.”

Dean knows intimately just how persistent his brother can be, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with what Ruby is telling him. She’s a demon: she should want to see him humiliated and broken as thoroughly as the yellow-eyed demon ever did. But somehow, Dean believes her.

It strikes him as wrong, tossing him back off balance, and he feels the shadow of his old strength slip away. His eyes drop back to the floor and he swallows as Ruby steps closer.

“You need to stop resisting, Dean,” she says, still keeping her voice down. “You need to give in before he pushes too hard and destroys you.”

Dean’s head jerks without permission—denial and refusal—and then he catches himself and clenches his jaw.

He expects Ruby to continue to pressure him, but instead she says, louder and more businesslike, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’m going to put in this order—” she waves the slip of paper “—and then one of my own, and you’re going to eat something. In return, I promise I’ll leave you alone. You can moon after the other meat suits to your heart’s content until the Boy King comes home.” She offers him a winning smile as she cocks her head. “So what do you say?”

It isn’t a real deal, not like the one that damned him and Sam and the world, but Dean still can’t meet her eyes as he nods. Instead, he watches the workers, who are busy peeling plastic off the gaping hole in the wall. He wonders what would happen if he wandered over there and tried to help. For an instant, the temptation is almost overwhelming.

But he’s pretty sure Sam wouldn’t approve, and he doesn’t want to get anyone else killed.

Ruby hums to herself as she heads to the door—a tuneless, absent noise—and Dean eases back against the headboard. His chest feels bruised as he stares at the men, filled with a restless, longing ache. He watches until his vision blurs and his eyes burn.

Unblinking. Starving for a glance—for just a sliver of contact.

But they never look back.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time the sun sets that evening, the men have managed to replace the window. They’ve unbent a little despite Ruby’s continued vigilance: talking amongst themselves more than Dean thinks they actually need to in order to work. The low, sporadic murmurs coming from their side of the suite are maddening—Dean is desperate for even a voyeuristic taste of human interaction, but no matter how much he strains, he can’t make out any words from his place against the headboard. He isn’t bold enough to move closer, either.

Part of his reluctance is due to his fear of crossing the intangible line Sam drew around him and accidentally getting one or more of the men killed: he doesn’t have any idea how far the buffer zone around him extends, after all. If Sam isn’t comfortable with the men even being in the same room with Dean—and the change of wardrobe, coupled with Sam’s display this morning and the theft of Dean’s voice, seem to indicate that he’s not—then approaching them at all is probably a really bad idea.

Even more than his brother’s reaction, though, Dean’s afraid of how the men would respond to any overtures on his part.

What if he goes over there and they continue to ignore him?

It’s like switching high schools all over again, only a thousand times worse because Dean can’t remember how to feign disinterest anymore. Sam has spent the last—last what? last few months? last few _years?_ —peeling Dean’s armor away piece by piece and now he’s pitifully vulnerable, face clearly reflecting the longing that hollows out his stomach and makes his chest ache. All the men have to do is glance at him and they’ll know, they’ll see. And there’s no Dad to reassure him if things go poorly, no hunts to lose himself in.

These days, Dean’s only comfort and reassurance come from Sam—from the numbing press of his brother’s power. His only release lies in the false hope of dreams. When he loses himself now, it’s in the devouring, consuming wash of Sam’s hunger.

It’s bad enough already, knowing that he’s going to have to kiss Sam again if he wants his voice back, without adding rejection to the mess.

Dean hopes that kiss will be easier this time, now that he knows what to expect, but he can’t bring himself to believe it. Actually, he’s pretty sure that Sam’s going to have to corner him and hold him still for it if he wants to hear Dean’s voice because Dean can’t kiss his brother again. Not of his own free will. Not if it’s going to affect him like it did this morning.

He can’t afford to.

He also doesn’t have any more time to work himself up over it because he can feel Sam’s approach, like a heat-filled shadow falling over his skin.

Dean jerks with the realization that his brother is almost home, and his elbow bumps the small lamp on the nightstand, knocking it onto the floor. Sleepy and Dopey look over at the noise, first at the fallen lamp and then at Dean—the brief, human brush of their eyes lodges in Dean’s throat and makes his skin ache with longing.

But Sam’s presence is becoming more real and less ghostly with every beat of Dean’s heart—he’ll be here any moment now. With a voiceless groan, Dean makes himself break the connection, turning his face and body away from the window and angling himself toward the door. He doesn’t want Sam to catch him with that wistful expression on his face: doesn’t want to give his brother any more fodder for his jealous rages. Sam already does well enough with that on his own.

“He’s home early,” Ruby comments from Sam’s chair.

Dean doesn’t look over, but he catches the unmistakable rustle of paper as she puts down the Vogue she was flipping through: old and out-dated and a little charred around the edges. She had a whole stack of them brought up with the dinner Dean choked down an hour or so ago—shopping for new bodies, she explained when he gave them an incredulous look.

Dean doesn’t want to think about what it means that he sensed Sam coming before the demon in the room did.

“Shouldn’t you be kneeling or something?” Ruby prods.

Dean’s insides clench at the memory of what happened the last time he offered his brother that particular gesture, but he gives Ruby a quick, hostile glare anyway. For a moment, the expression feels familiar and easy, like slipping into an old, worn t-shirt.

For the second time today, there’s a flicker of unease on Ruby’s face—as though he’s dangerous, not unarmed and helpless and beaten down—but any satisfaction Dean might have taken from that evaporates as the first, faint tendrils of Sam’s power kiss their way over his skin in greeting. Cold and shaken, he cuts his eyes away.

He can’t afford to be that Dean again. Not anymore. Not when it’s going to get someone killed.

 _But he’s still in here,_ Dean thinks as he looks down at his hand where it’s clenched on the bedspread. Sam hasn’t quite managed to kill him yet.

He doesn’t know whether the proximity of other humans is bringing his old self back out, or if there’s something deeper at work here: some force reaching inside of him and drawing that deep, buried core of defiance back up to the surface where he needs it. He supposes that it doesn’t matter, but he’d like to think there’s something looking out for him—something other than Sam. He’d like to think that the blue-eyed version of his brother from his dreams wasn’t lying to him about help being on the way.

The door to the suite opens with an abruptness that doesn’t bode well for Sam’s mood. His expression isn’t all that reassuring either: face weary and cross, his mouth turned down into a frown and his eyes dark. There’s ash on his clothes and skin—residue from the fire outside, Dean tells himself, but he can’t quite believe the lie.

He watches warily as his brother steps into the room, leaving the door open behind him. Sam’s gaze immediately fastens on Dean and sharpens into something that leaves him feeling breathless and lightheaded.

After a long moment, Sam says, “Everyone out.”

The workmen obey with instant, silent obedience, which is understandable. If Dean could, he’d use that command as an excuse to escape his brother’s overwhelming presence as well. But he knows full well that Sam’s definition of ‘everyone’ doesn’t include Dean. It never has. There’s Sam, and there’s Dean, and then there’s everyone else.

How ironic, now, that Dean used to revel in that definition: that he used to love how tightly it bound them together. How ironic that it was always Sam who fought the mentality as though he was shackled to it; who shook himself from Dean’s arms so he could run off to Stanford and be normal. It would have been better for everyone if they’d stayed like that, with Dean forever grasping after Sam’s fleeting shadow. It would have been better if Sam had never abandoned normal to cling back.

“Don’t you want to hear my report?” Ruby asks. Dean can’t look away from Sam—it isn’t possible to tear his eyes from his brother’s—but he can tell from the direction of her voice that she hasn’t moved.

“Everyone,” Sam repeats. He doesn’t sound angry—not yet—but he’s clearly considering it.

When Ruby takes the hint and files past Sam at the end of the line of humans, Dean finds himself wishing that she were staying. It isn’t anything but pragmatism: the more bodies in a room, the less attention Sam will be able to focus on him. But she leaves without glancing back, shutting the door behind her, and Dean feels the walls of his prison collapse back down to their suffocating, claustrophobic size as his brother moves forward.

“Dean,” Sam says, pitching his voice softer now, like a caress. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

Isn’t Dean going to kiss him, he means.

And no. No, he isn’t. Sam can’t _do_ this to him, damn it! He can’t keep winding Dean up and forcing him to operate so far in the red that the glass on the pressure gauge is cracked and leaking steam. He sure as fuck can’t do that and expect Dean to act like some kind of domesticated, Stepford housewife.

Only there’s nothing but certainty in Sam’s eyes as he gets on the bed and crawls toward Dean.

“I missed you, baby,” he breathes, reaching out and caressing Dean’s bare ankle.

Dean kicks out at the touch, shaking Sam’s hand off and tossing himself off the edge of the bed. He hits the floor rolling—old, reawakened instincts taking over—and comes up with the lamp he knocked over clutched in both hands. It’s a slender thing, but it’s made of solid metal and he’s sure that he can do damage with it if he needs to. If Sam lets him get close enough.

His brother blinks at him for a moment, nonplussed. He takes in Dean’s stance, the lamp clutched in his hands like a baseball bat, and then Dean’s furious, hostile face. And laughs.

“You gonna hit me with that?” Sam asks, moving forward again. When he reaches the edge of the bed, he slides off and stands up. “Huh, Dean? You gonna bash your little brother’s brains in? You gonna man up and be the big damn hero?”

Damn right he is.

Maybe.

Dean shifts his grip on the lamp, mind whirling as he tries to decide on a plan of action. He can knock Sam out, at least. Then he can get out of here and go find Bo—Shit. The elevator.

His chest constricts at the memory of those green flames, the exact shade of his eyes, and how it felt like they were eating through his skin: how they latched onto the tattoo on his back and _hurt_ him. The tattoo has changed since his escape attempt, but Dean senses that it hasn’t changed enough to let him pass. There’s no way to know whether it will hurt more or less to step into the elevator car now.

No, scratch that: it’s definitely going to hurt more. Sam wouldn’t want to risk losing Dean when he’s so close to succumbing.

Blinking the phantom memory of pain away, Dean looks at the man standing in front of him—at the ash on Sam’s clothing and face—and tries to picture himself going through with his threat. He envisions Sam’s head cracked open and leaking blood and thin, clear fluid onto the floor. Imagines grey matter caught in Sam’s stupid, floppy hair.

His stomach goes rock hard and hollow, sickened. His hands tremble.

 _It’s not Sammy,_ he reminds himself. _Sammy’s already gone. His soul’s dead: he told you himself._

That’s nothing but the truth—Dean knows it is, he felt it when Sam was broadcasting the story so strongly into his mind—but Dean still can’t bring himself to internalize it. He doesn’t know how to look at Sam and see nothing but the murderer, locking out everything that came before. Sam is standing before him now with his clothes and face and fingers coated with evidence of today’s work and Dean still can’t come to grips with the fact that his little brother is dead, that the only Sam left in that body is the one the demons call the Boy King.

And Sam knows it.

Dean takes a moment to catch up to his brother and realize that this was a futile attempt from the start. Sam can push him and push him and push him, and he can slaughter innocents by the millions, and Dean is never going to be able to kill him. Fuck the logistics behind landing a blow on someone like Sam, who can probably toss mountains around with a thought; Dean’s completely and utterly incapable of taking that step.

It isn’t the first time he’s had the realization, not by a long shot, but it’s just as unpleasant and shocking as it has been each and every time before. Dean keeps waiting to wise up, is the thing, and it keeps not happening.

He’s pretty sure that no one else in the history of the world has been so stupidly, blindly pathetic.

His brother moves suddenly and unexpectedly, grabbing Dean and swinging him into the wall hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Dean moves on instinct, bringing the lamp up for a strike—nothing fatal, just to make Sam let go—but before he can manage it, his brother catches his wrist and pins it to the wall by his head.

“You might be capable of beating the shit out of me,” Sam says, close enough that the words ghost across Dean’s face in a warm breath. “But you and I both know you’re never going to take the final plunge. I’ll let you get a few whacks in, though, if that’s going to make you feel better.”

And then, incomprehensibly, he releases Dean. Taking a step back, he spreads his arms wide and closes his eyes.

“Go ahead, take your best shot.”

Dean stands against the wall for a moment, frozen. His eyes flick over his brother’s body, the hunter in him noting potential targets—places that would leave Sam hurting like hell, but not dead. He’s still angry—maybe even angrier than he was before for being so damned transparent—and there’s a large part of him that wants nothing more than to take Sam up on what he’s offering.

But for some reason, he isn’t moving.

It occurs to Dean that he’s standing at a kind of crossroads. There are two paths before him—one where he embraces the rage and lashes out _(won’t bring anyone back, though: won’t stop Sam from murdering more)_ , and one where he drops the lamp and falls to his knees at Sam’s feet, where he’s becoming more and more sure he belongs.

His anger is fresh, backed by his recent discovery that the old Dean Winchester is still alive and kicking, but he’s been submitting in fits and starts for so long—has been loving Sam for so long—and the longer he thinks about it, the more horrifying the thought of taking the lamp to his brother’s body becomes. Finally, after a long delay, the lamp falls from his numb fingers to thump onto the rug.

Sam opens his eyes at the sound. He looks down at the lamp for a moment before raising his gaze to Dean’s. There’s a smile on his face, fond and confident.

“Last chance, baby,” he says. “If you’re going to take a swing, do it now.”

Dean desperately wants to—if only to protect his delusion that it was ever an option—but he still doesn’t move.

Sam’s smile shifts by gradual degrees—becoming warmer, more intimate—and when it’s become painfully clear to both of them that Dean is all bluster and no follow through, he steps forward again, crowding Dean up against the wall. Dean swallows thickly, pushing back against the warped plaster in a futile attempt to keep some distance between them, but doesn’t resist. There’s no point, after all, and he’s had his nose rubbed in just how screwed he is enough for one day: doesn’t want to drag this out any more than he has to.

“So,” Sam whispers, his eyes intent on Dean’s lips. “How about that hello?”

The dull ache of defeat washes over Dean as he understands that it was always going to come to this—that he was deluding himself when he considered the possibility of refusing. The last, faint vestiges of his anger slip away as he closes his eyes and moves forward, pressing their mouths together.

Sam makes him work for it—maybe annoyed by Dean’s display of resistance, maybe just because he can—but Dean finally manages to force his tongue past his brother’s lips and into his mouth. He tastes sweet again, just like he did this morning, and Dean’s hands come up to grip his brother’s arms as he laps at the flavor. There’s no heady rush of passion this time, though—just Sam’s mouth and his—and when Dean feels the hot, honeyed lump of power in his throat dissolve, he jerks his head to the side immediately, breaking the contact.

Sam makes a disappointed noise, but Dean is too busy comparing tonight with this morning in his head to worry about it.

He’s been assuming that his earlier passion was, at least in part, manufactured. Every other brush of Sam’s power is sensualized, after all: Dean had no reason to think that this morning’s transaction was any different. But he isn’t hard now. He isn’t horny. He’s just lost and aching: still a little stunned by how clearly Sam just illustrated that killing him isn’t ever going to be a viable option as far as Dean is concerned. Still a little sickened by the guilty shame that accompanies the hard truth that he couldn’t even take a swing at his brother when Sam offered one.

He would have, in the beginning. If Sam had offered the same thing then, Dean would have swung right the fuck away: would’ve done it gladly. Back in those first, nightmarish days, when the only emotions Dean could discern from the wreckage of his heart were betrayal and fury. Hell, just a couple of weeks ago he took a swing or two—driven to it by Sam’s betrayal and the sick, violated feeling of being forcibly infected with the yellow-eyed demon’s power.

But that was before he kissed Sam. That was before he owned up to the situation, to himself, to his feelings about Sam. That was before he accepted the nightmare enough to transform the tattoo on his back.

Which is probably why Sam waited until now to make the offer.

“It was me this morning,” Dean says. The sound of his recovered voice warms him slightly, familiar and reassuring as an old friend, but mostly he just feels humiliated and disgusted with himself.

“Mmm,” Sam agrees, nuzzling at Dean’s jaw. “Left me hard all day, baby. You don’t even know how fucking distracting it was, thinking about you waiting for me. Couldn’t wait to get home.” He kisses Dean on the cheek, and then again on the corner of his mouth. “You want to pick up where we left off?”

“Get off me.”

Dean doesn’t think Sam will for a moment, thinks maybe he’ll be punished for the words or the colorless way they were uttered, but then his brother sighs and complies. There’s more than a trace of annoyance in his voice as he says, “You know, Dean, this blushing virgin act is really getting old. Especially when you’re clearly hungry for it.”

“Just because I want something doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it,” Dean responds, trying to edge out from between Sam and the wall.

Sam blocks his path immediately, eyes flashing and sharp. “So you admit it. You admit you want me.”

It’s true. As much as Dean wishes it weren’t, it is. He clenches his jaw, fighting back the useless, shamed tears suddenly blurring his vision, and then, thickly, says, “No. I want my brother. You’re just—you’re just a demonic blow up doll.”

The temperature in the room drops, air crackling with frozen lightning, and Sam’s power slides over Dean’s skin in warning.

“Go ahead and punish me if you want to,” he continues, staring past Sam at the far wall. “Fuck knows I can’t stop you. But that’s all it is. Your body feels good, and I—I remember my brother, and he’s who I want. Not you.”

He’s lying and they both know it—both know that Dean can’t separate the two, not even to save the world. Dean can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. Pushing Sam’s buttons like this is only going to end poorly, but here’s Dean doing his best to make the Boy King blow all his gaskets.

He roots around inside of himself, feeling through the aching, wretched mess of emotion until he finds the pulsing core of self-loathing waiting beneath all the hurt and the shame. He knows then what he’s doing, what he needs to maintain his sanity, and when Sam moves toward him he doesn’t shift away.

Sam steps in close, power radiating off of his body and soaking into Dean with the same pleasure-pain edge it always carries. Dean’s cock fills obediently, and his skin aches for Sam’s touch. There’s no real difference between this artificial arousal and what he felt on his own this morning. Casting his mind back over the last however many months, he wonders how many times Sam’s power nudged him into this state. How many times he found it on his own. And then decides that he doesn’t actually want to know.

“I _am_ your brother,” Sam growls. “And you fucking know it.”

“Sam’s dead,” Dean says. It’s difficult to force the words out past the lump in his throat: hurts even more to say them than it does to think them. And Sam flinches, which leaves Dean feeling even more miserable and guilty than before. But Dean _needs_ this—he very clearly needs this: needs to be reminded—so he says, “You murdered his soul, you son of a bitch. I fucking _hate_ you.”

Sam’s power digs into him at the words, sending deep, burning roots deep into Dean’s body and soul. It snarls through the altered lines of the tattoo, setting off sunbursts of memory that flicker through him, the jerky here-then-gone-again rhythm of a strobe light.

Beyond the shuttering flashes and the pleasurable, aching flood of power, Sam’s eyes are watching him. Sam’s eyes have gone honey-dark and hot. Sam’s eyes are telling him that he’s about to get what he’s been bucking for.

Sure enough, a second later the air solidifies around Dean’s body. Power crackles against his skin as he’s lifted into the air and tossed the few feet back over onto the bed. The impact is jarring—punishingly rough: Sam has better control than this, even when he’s angry—but that isn’t what makes Dean gasp and jerk.

It starts as a single memory—Sam’s mouth on his throat, Sam’s cock pushing up inside of him while Dean hangs on and moans—but others catch on the tail end of the image, igniting like demolition fuses, and everything piles in on him, faster and faster until it’s every time Sam ever had him: every first, aching thrust pushing into him at once and making his ass burn and twitch as he’s simultaneously filled to bursting and reminded just how achingly empty he really is. How long it’s been since he felt Sam like that.

“Fuck,” he manages. “Fuck, Sam—”

“Something wrong?” Sam’s trying for studied innocence, but there’s too much anger there. Too much of the cold smirk Dean knows his brother is wearing is coiled and twisting around the words for the pretense of ignorance to be at all believable.

“S-Sam,” Dean moans, facedown on the bed in a mess of uncontrollable limbs and shuddering, tense muscles. It’s all he can get out as the memories congeal and loop around again.

His legs push wide, futilely trying to make room for something intangible. As the memories thrust in again, his next breath comes out on a breathy whine that would be embarrassing if he could think about anything but how goddamned good Sam used to feel inside him.

This is punishment, all right, but it isn’t the kind Dean was hoping for. Fuck, he knew from the start that he was playing with fire, but it somehow escaped his attention that he was doing it in a room filled with gasoline and blasting powder.

Dean’s met iguanas that weren’t this stupid.

“Sam,” he manages again, in a tight, strangled voice, and isn’t sure if it’s a plea for his brother to stop or if it’s a demand for him to get over here and fill Dean up for real.

Either way, the images finally tumble away, only to be replaced by Sammy at eight months. Sammy’s still in Mom’s stomach, and Dean has his hand pressed against the swell that Mom swears will be a little brother soon. Dad watches them fondly from his armchair while Dean replaces his hand with his ear, listening to his unborn baby brother shift and kick. He thinks maybe he started loving Sam then, sight unseen—that he loved the potential of him before Sam took his first bloodied, squalling breath.

Coming so quickly on the heels of so many fucks, the memory is shocking in its purity, and it shoves Dean sideways out of his arousal and firmly into nausea. He hasn’t felt this sickened by his relationship with Sam for years—made peace with it not long after things started back up after Stanford, and fuck anyone who looked at them with disgust. He’s had flutters of unease, sure—usually when Sam was acting particularly young, once or twice in mid-fuck when the twist of Sam’s mouth reminded him of younger, innocent times—but nothing like this full-bodied reaction. Guilt and denial and revulsion spill through his chest, mingling with a faint twinge of bewilderment at how he got here.

How the fuck did he go from that chubby, innocent kid to a man who’s fine with fucking his baby brother just as long as said brother isn’t busy trying to destroy the world?

That memory skims away into others, bits of the past moving by swiftly again, and the sensation of Sam coming toward the bed—Dean can feel his brother’s approach as a heated prickling along the lines of the tattoo, as the tightening throb of the cuffs around his wrists—jerks Dean out of his self-pitying, useless wondering and into more immediate problems.

Because Sam isn’t finished with him. Sam isn’t finished by a long shot.

This is what Dean thought he wanted—what he still knows he needs—but that was a couple hundred remembered fucks and a hand on his mother’s distended stomach ago, and right now all he wants to do is curl up in a corner and tune out for a while. He realizes that he’s still sprawled out on the bed, mostly where Sam dropped him, and starts to scramble up—useless attempt to flee, but the instinctive desire for self-preservation is stronger than the knowledge that this is going to happen no matter what Dean does to prevent it.

He manages to get his hands beneath him, pushing up onto his knees, and then grunts as Sam's power presses in again, freezing him in place. It sharpens almost immediately, growing claws and tearing the oversized hoodie and sweatpants from his body in strips.

As the meager layer of protection falls away and leaves him bared to the room, Dean's heart beats faster and his stomach twists. He hates being aroused when Sam’s pushing him like this—it’s really fucking confusing, more so now that he can’t tell if it’s his brother’s fault or his own hardwired response—but he hates even more having the possibility of denial ripped away from him. There’s no use in pretending to be uninterested when his cock is hanging full and flushed for Sam to see.

Not that there was any point in pretending anyway, not with Sam, but Dean likes having the illusion of plausible deniability.

The bed dips behind him as Sam climbs on, and Dean shuts his eyes again as his brother’s hand closes briefly around his ankle before running up over his calf and the back of his knee and up onto his thigh. Dean’s sure Sam’s going to touch his cock where it’s dangling, hard and ready, but instead his brother skims over the swell of one buttock and touches his back.

Dean didn’t think that the memories could get any stronger or more distracting, but he was wrong because they intensify at Sam’s touch—becoming vivid enough that his body shakes helplessly in the face of them. So many memories, so many moments in Dean’s life, all of them so desperately focused on his little brother.

Dean knew he was stupidly wrapped up in Sam, but having his face shoved in it like this is just adding insult to injury.

Sam at four running through the sprinkler _(don’t trip don’t fall don’t get hurt)_ in the neighbor’s yard,

Sam at six with watermelon _(seed spitting contest later, and they’re both going to end up with the damn things in their hair)_ smeared on his grinning face,

Sam at eight kicking a soccer ball _(five finger discount from a sporting goods store two towns back)_ around a parking lot,

Sam at ten watching TV with his feet propped up in Dean’s lap _(gonna have to stop doing that soon, it’s doing fucked up things to Dean’s libido)_ ,

Sam at twelve trying to handle the buck _(bruises on his ass the size of fucking grapefruits, Dean should have checked the field more carefully for rocks before they started)_ of his first shotgun,

Sam at fourteen sliding into Dean’s bed _(storming outside, Sammy’s scared so it’s okay, it’s okay)_ and even though Dean knows he shouldn’t because Sam is old enough to handle a little thunder on his own, he lets Sam in. He lets his little brother curl up against his side even though it’s hot and he’s sweating a little, and if Sam’s hard then Dean isn’t going to pay any fucking attention. It’s not the kid’s fault—he’s fourteen; he’d get hard in a stiff wind _(haha)_ —and Dean’s just going to go to sleep and he’s not going to pay any attention if Sam’s mouth accidentally brushes against his cheek, bed’s too small for this is all, and—

Dean sucks in a deep breath as the memories finally release him, coming back to himself to find Sam draped over him. The buttons on Sam’s shirt are digging into Dean’s spine, his jeans are rough against the soft skin of Dean’s ass and the back of his legs. He has one hand planted next to Dean’s on the bed, while the other spans Dean’s stomach and holds him close.

“Love that one,” Sam pants in his ear, rolling his hips a little and rubbing what feels like a pretty insistent erection against Dean’s ass.

The insinuation, coupled with the recent surge of memories, makes Dean’s heart beat alarmingly fast.

As he begins to caress Dean’s stomach in slow, firm circles, Sam adds, “I came, you know. I waited until you fell asleep and then I rubbed up against your hip until I got off.”

“You’re fucking lying,” Dean says, but his voice isn’t at all steady because he knows Sam did that later, after they started fucking. He remembers waking up and catching his brother at it—late night in August, all the windows open and the sound of highway traffic filtering in from outside.

Dean complained at first, grumpy from getting pulled out of a sound sleep, but his sourness didn’t last long in the face of Sam’s blatant, unselfconscious desire. If he’s honest with himself, it didn’t take much more than hearing his name moaned in a pained, pleading voice to rouse his own need, and he pulled his boxers down without even bothering to crack his eyes, half-asleep and languidly horny, and let Sam fuck him.

It was hot at the time, when Sam was seventeen and Dean was mind-numbingly aware of how big his brother’s hands were on his hips, but the thought of his fourteen year old kid brother doing the same feels wrong and impossible.

 _Is_ impossible, Dean’s sure of it. Sammy never would have taken advantage of him like that.

“You’d know all about lying, wouldn’t you, baby?” Sam purrs now, skimming his hand lower on Dean’s stomach. His fingers are splayed, reaching, and even though he expected his brother to touch him earlier, the feel of Sam’s fingers closing around his cock still comes as a surprise.

Sam doesn’t stroke him, doesn’t even rub his thumb over the head. He just holds Dean’s cock, almost idly, as though gauging the weight of him, and Dean’s own hands fist in the sheets. It takes all of his concentration to keep from thrusting into that touch.

“The thing about lies,” Sam murmurs between nips at Dean’s earlobe. “Is that you should only tell them when you can’t be found out. Take this for instance: now that I’ve put the idea there, you’re never going to know, are you? You’re never going to be sure that I didn’t take what I wanted from you while you were asleep.”

Dean scrunches his eyes shut, hating Sam for this. Hating that it’s true. He’s ninety-nine percent certain that Sam is lying to him, but as much as he wants to, he _can’t_ be sure. Because Sam did it later, and Sam was ... persistent ... when he was younger. Not like he is now, not precisely, but he never really learned to take no for an answer.

Dean’s fault, he guesses, since he’s the one who worked so hard to make sure ‘no’ wasn’t a word Sam heard a hell of a lot of.

As Sam’s teeth dig into the soft flesh of his earlobe and draw off slowly, Dean hisses. He grimaces as his brother’s tongue comes out to trace along the shell before dipping briefly inside. Wishes it didn’t make him feel so much like moaning.

“You, though,” Sam pants, his breath hot and moist and doing shameful things to Dean’s cock where his brother is still holding him. “Anytime I want to know how you feel about me, all I need to do is strip you down and take a look at my mark.”

His whole body moves, rubbing sinuously over Dean’s bare skin—over his back. Over the fucking tattoo.

“So I have to wonder, baby,” Sam continues in a deceptively gentle voice, “Why you’d be deliberately trying to piss me off.”

There’s no noticeable transition from seduction to fury. One second, Sam’s hand is on Dean’s cock and then it’s tangled in his hair, yanking him back up and onto his knees. Dean comes with the commanding tug, wincing, and lets Sam pull him backwards until they’re flush together again, Dean’s back pressed against his brother’s broad chest. He thinks Sam will stop there—hopes he will—but instead, Sam just tightens his grip and keeps drawing Dean’s head back until it hurts, until his neck is stretched in a long, arching line and he can’t swallow or breathe right, and Dean is never going to get used to how vulnerable he feels in this position.

“Care and share time, big brother,” Sam growls. His power slithers down Dean’s exposed front, heating his skin and sending arousing shivers through his body. Only his cock and balls are neglected, and the contrast makes them throb fiercely with need. With how goddamned much he wants to be touched. It’s a deliberate tease, and Dean rallies with a faint pulse of anger.

“Fuck you.” The words are strained, forced out from his throat at this awkward angle, but they’re perfectly audible and the defiance makes him feel a little better.

Then Sam asks, “Would that make it easier for you?”

It takes Dean a few seconds to work out what Sam's suggesting, and then the flash of comprehension makes him bite down on his lower lip to keep from moaning. His cock gives a twitch between his legs. He can’t look down with Sam holding him the way he is, but the tip feels wet—cool as air brushes against it—and Dean’s pretty sure it’s precome.

“Personally,” Sam drawls, “I always thought it worked best the other way around, but I’ll take you any way I can get you.”

Dean clenches his jaw and keeps his mouth shut. And fights not to think about how it felt on the rare occasions Sam allowed him—once or twice even asked him—to top.

Sam’s chuckle is rich and dark enough to feel like something solid—warm honey sliding over Dean’s skin—and he squeezes his eyes shut as Sam’s power redoubles its efforts. Two warmer, slicker tendrils latch onto his nipples, moving across the nubs like hungry mouths and nipping them into sensitive peaks. Dean’s back arches without his permission and his breath stutters out. He doesn’t think he can take much more of this without folding—without begging for it the way Sam wants—and he’s already ceded too much ground for one day.

He makes a single, brief attempt to struggle free—aborted when Sam’s grip tightens in warning—and then swallows his pride and chokes out, “Stop.”

Sam doesn’t.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he demands instead. “Isn’t this why you lied? You wanted me to get angry, didn’t you, Dean? Wanted me to lose my temper?”

A stray coil of power slithers along the inside of Dean’s left thigh, making his leg jerk to the side reflexively as he bites out, “Yes!”

“What did you think would happen?” Sam asks. “And for Christ’s sake, why would you _want_ something like that?”

Some of the anger has drained out of his voice, replaced by confusion and curiosity, but that won’t last for long. Because even if Dean keeps his mouth shut, Sam’s smart enough to figure the answer out on his own, and he isn’t going to be at all happy when he does. Sure enough, a moment later Sam’s hold on Dean’s hair tightens up again as his power goes damp and cold on Dean’s skin.

Shit.

“What did you think would happen?” Sam repeats in a completely different tone of voice. “Did you think I’d hurt you? Did you think I’d turn into the monster you want me to be? _Did you?_ ” He’s yelling now, and shaking Dean hard enough that Dean can hear the tendons in his neck popping alarmingly, but it still isn’t enough—isn’t what Dean _needs_.

None of it is anywhere near enough.

“Answer me,” Sam snarls, and this time the words echo with power, making it a command Dean can’t ignore.

He tries anyway, fighting against the compulsion, but the pressure builds with startling speed and he doesn’t last more than a few seconds before confessing, “I needed you to remind me what you are. I needed to see what’s behind the mask.”

Sam shoves him forward at that, down onto bed. Dean just barely manages to get his hands in front of him before his face collides with the mattress—soft surface or not, that was going to hurt—but he doesn’t move while Sam gets up. He waits until he hears his brother moving away before cautiously glancing back over his shoulder.

Sam strides to the center of the room with jerky, sharp steps, like it’s taking every ounce of his control to keep from turning the entire place into kindling, and then whirls back. His eyes fasten on Dean and pin him in place, sucking the air from his lungs.

“This wasn’t enough?” Sam demands, gesturing at the wreckage around them. “Huh, Dean? All those families you watched me slaughter before you ran whimpering to Bobby with your tail between your legs, they weren’t enough? _How much is it going to take?_ ”

Dragged face-to-face with truth by his brother’s question, Dean cringes. His body flushes with shame and guilt, stomach twisting in on itself. But his cock is still hard, and Dean’s pathetically grateful it’s hidden beneath his body against the mattress.

“How. Much.” Sam takes a single step forward with each word, power bleeding into the air around him and dimming it with a blurred hint of smoke.

“I don’t know,” Dean whispers, but he’s lying again. He’s lying because he sees Sam’s point—has seen it all along, even though he hasn’t wanted to admit it.

If Dean hasn’t been able to convince himself yet—if he can keep losing sight of what Sam has done, forgetting thoroughly enough to crawl into his brother’s lap and lose himself in a make-out session when the room around him is ruined and stained with evidence of Sam’s crimes—then nothing is ever going to be enough. This is one lesson he’s never going to learn.

He expects Sam to really lose it then, but instead his brother seems to deflate. The pulse of his power quiets, the room brightens, and Sam’s eyes lighten slightly. He cocks his head as he looks at Dean, and his lips twitch up into a faint, amused smile.

“You keep trying to make me a monster in your head, don’t you?” he says. “Well, I haven’t hidden anything. I’ve butchered in front of you, I’ve tortured. I’ve been completely upfront with you about what I am, what I’m doing, what I want.”

Dean’s throat works as he drops his eyes to look at the mattress, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You keep trying to convince yourself that I’m playing you—that I’m just pretending to be Sam to fuck with you. You keep trying to separate the monster from the brother.” There’s a pause, where Dean envisions Sam’s smile going triumphant and mocking, and then his brother says, “So tell me, Dean, how’s that working out for you?”

Dean’s chest goes tight and his eyes burn—suddenly enough than he can’t stop the first tear from spilling down his cheek, although pushing his face against the mattress keeps the rest from following. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him, the weight of his brother’s regard, and he’s been naked in front of him before—plenty of times—but he’s never felt quite this transparent. The silence between them stretches out, Sam waiting for an answer he doesn’t really need.

When his voice comes again, it’s softer. Fond and gentle and just a little bit sad.

“You’re the only one wearing a mask here. I’m just trying to get you to take it off.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dean can’t sleep that night, too wound up by the stress of the day and by the hot press of Sam lying close against his back. Instead, he stares out at the ruined room through the darkness and tries to swallow the fact that he’s the type of guy who can overlook the fact that his brother’s a monster.

He isn’t any closer to managing it when the sun rises in the morning and Sam wakes up.

Sam kisses him for a while in bed, lazy and content and keeping his hands well above Dean’s waist and his power to himself. When he rises, he pulls Dean up as well and walks him into the shower, where he insists on washing them both. It’s embarrassingly intimate, having Sam’s hands on him beneath the flow of water, and even though Sam isn’t playing any games this morning—at least not as far as Dean can tell—by the time they’re done, Dean’s half-hard and twitchy with how much he wants to turn around and shove Sam against the side of the shower and kiss him.

It goes a long way toward forcing the truth of the situation home—just how far Dean has fallen, how short a distance he has left to go—and when Sam offers him a choice between proving himself again and wearing the collar, Dean doesn’t even hesitate. His voice is a little thick and unsteady, but the words come out understandably enough. He just wishes he felt more certain that he’s making the right decision.

But Sam only gives him a contented smile, with just a trace of smugness around the edges, and Dean has the sinking suspicion that this is yet another case of fucked if he does, fucked if he doesn’t. In which case, he supposes that it doesn’t matter how happy Sam is about this decision. Dean might not be able to win, but he can’t actively participate in his own downfall anymore either.

He’s going to twist into what his brother wants eventually—that much is clear—but damned if he’s going to make it easy for Sam in the meantime.

“You sure?” Sam asks, twirling the thin metal band around one finger. It looks deceptively light and harmless, but Dean’s breath still shallows as he looks at it. His heart speeds.

“I’m not kissing you again,” he says.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Sam returns, casually confident, and gestures Dean closer.

Dean goes—mostly because he knows that if he makes Sam come to him, things are going to be even harder than they already are—and isn’t surprised when his brother welcomes him over with another kiss. He is surprised by how soft and gentle Sam’s mouth is, how coaxing. Trying to prove him wrong already by tricking him into kissing back.

Clenching his hands into fists, Dean stands there passively and waits for his brother to give up. He doesn’t quite dare to zone out—Sam’s made it clear how he feels about that—but he feels safe enough staring over his brother’s shoulder at a particularly dark blotch on the wall. The view is enough to keep him strong, and eventually Sam seems to get that Dean isn’t folding this time, smiling into the kiss before backing up.

Dean searches his brother’s eyes as Sam releases him, confused and wary. Sam didn’t try to cop a feel. He didn’t try to push his tongue past Dean’s unresponsive lips. It occurs to Dean again that his brother hasn’t used his power once this morning, not even in passing.

As Sam lifts the collar toward his neck, Dean shoots a hand out and grabs his brother’s wrist. There’s a tiny flicker of annoyance, deep in Sam’s eyes, but it’s quickly buried again. Sam stands quietly and lets Dean hold him.

“What’s the catch?” Dean asks.

“Who says there is one?” Sam’s face is open and guileless, innocent.

Dean guesses that the scorpion was wearing a similar expression when it convinced the fox to carry it across the river. It probably even managed to look surprised by its own betrayal when it stung the fox midway over and condemned them both to a watery, cold death.

“There’s always a catch with you,” Dean says. The words are bitter, but they come out pleading. Weak. They mirror the sensation in Dean's chest, where he’s wrapped up in knots and cringing and just wants to know from what direction the next blow is coming so he can prepare himself for it.

It’s times like this that he just can’t stand himself anymore.

Sam smiles at him now, and his smile isn’t guileless at all. It’s the Boy King’s smile: slow and secretive and promising rough caresses and low, panting moans. That smile turns the rest of the morning into something artificial and plastic, like the mock-ups of happy-go-lucky family life on one of those old TV shows.

Leave it to Sammy. Sammy Knows Best. I Dream of Sammy.

Fuck fuckity fuck, Dean’s losing his mind.

“The collar or a kiss, Dean. Pick one or I’ll pick for you.”

Dean stares into his brother’s eyes for a moment longer, trying to figure out which option Sam wants him to choose so that he can dig his heels in and go the other way, but he can’t see past his own reflection. His face, trapped and smothered by all that gold.

Shuddering imperceptivity, he closes his eyes and growls, “Just put the fucking thing on me already.”

Sam’s fingers brush Dean’s throat as he eases the metal into place—it isn’t cold at all, not like Dean thought it would be. The metal is warm, actually, and throbbing, like it has a heartbeat. Like it’s alive.

Dean is suddenly very, very sure that he made the wrong choice.

“Wait—” he chokes out, but Sam is already snicking the collar closed.

It’s tighter than is strictly comfortable, just like Dean knew it would be—tight enough that he can feel the restriction every time he breathes. His breath comes faster at the sudden sensation of Sam’s power spilling through his body and filling him up inside and leaving him feverish and dazed.

“Hmm,” Sam breathes. “That’s a nice look on you, actually.”

The sound of his brother’s voice goes through Dean like a dry orgasm, making his muscles go loose and warm and dropping him to his knees. He grasps his cock through the sweats, finding it hard and eager. He has to concentrate, blinking through the arousing haze, to see Sam looking down at him with a pleased little smile.

“Off,” he slurs. “Sammy, take it off. Changed m’mind.”

Sam crouches down in front of Dean, taking his sweet time about it, and then reaches out to tap the collar with one finger. The vibration shoots straight down to Dean’s dick, where it strokes him from the inside out.

“Not how the deal goes, baby.”

“Oh my God,” Dean gasps, bending forward and pressing the heel of his hand against his cock, hard.

“Just let it happen,” Sam whispers, stroking Dean’s hair. “It’ll be easier if you just let it happen.”

Fuck, Sam has to shut up. He has to shut up right fucking now before he makes Dean come like this, just by crouching in front of him and talking in that soft, husky voice that’s doing filthy things to Dean’s insides. His cock pulses, desperate, and Dean groans.

“So pretty like this, aren’t you?” Sam says. “Trying so desperately to be virtuous when all you want is to let go.”

God, why is he still talking? It’s like he has no idea what the sound of his voice is doing to Dean, how hard it’s hitting him.

No, no wait. On second thought, Sam knows exactly what the sound of his voice is doing.

“Come on, baby,” Sam urges. “Been a while since you came, hasn’t it? You know it’ll feel good. And I want to see you. Fuck, Dean, you’re goddamned gorgeous like this. So fucking needy. And all you need to do is stop fighting and let it happen.”

“No,” Dean pants, grinding his hand harder against his cock and balls. “Won’t.”

Except he isn’t sure whether he’s trying to keep himself from coming or humping against his own hand anymore.

“Really?” Sam breathes, dancing his fingers lightly over Dean’s cheek. Oh fuck, that contact feels good. “Just like you’re not going to kiss me?”

Kissing ...

Dean’s head comes up at the enticing thought. It’s difficult to see clearly like this, but Sam’s mouth jumps out vividly enough. Too vividly, actually, because Dean can almost feel those lips on his. Sam has a big mouth—generous. Sam’s used that mouth on Dean more times than he can count, Sam can do fucking fantastic things with it, and ... and Sam’s tongue is coming out and sliding along his bottom lip, wetting it.

Dean’s brain stutters and when it comes back online a moment later, he has Sam pinned to the carpet. He claimed Sam’s mouth with his own sometime in the missing interval, and now he’s kissing his brother without any technique whatsoever. It isn’t coherent enough to even count as a kiss, really—too messy and wet and uncoordinated—and Dean’s reminded of the way things used to get after a hunt when his blood was up and so was Sam’s and they couldn’t wait to get back to the motel. They kissed like this then, when they ended up fucking on the hood of the car, or in the backseat, or just on the ground outside in the moonlight.

Christ, if Dean could think straight long enough to get them both naked they’d be fucking _now_ , but as it is all he can do is hump against his brother’s body like some horny, inexperienced teenager and maul his mouth. Sam seems to like it, though—he’s moaning against Dean’s lips _(or maybe those are Dean's moans, he can’t tell)_ —and Dean ruts down against his brother’s hip one last time and comes with a shuddering, painfully strong rush of pleasure that sweeps his thoughts away a second time.

When the world comes back, Sam’s the one kissing him: deep and thorough. Sam’s hand is up beneath Dean’s hoodie, pinching and rubbing at one nipple, and he’s definitely moaning now—hungry, low sounds. The collar is hot around Dean’s neck, and Sam’s power is still filling him, stroking up against his insides like an overly friendly, purring panther. Dean's sweatpants are wet and slick with the evidence of how much he enjoyed what just happened, catching and sticking to the damp skin of his dick, which is in the slowly softening, hypersensitive stage that always takes him after a particularly strong orgasm.

All Dean really wants to do is pass out for a while—wouldn't be hard; his body is still mostly lax from the burst of pleasure and his mind is more than a little dazed from the endorphins—but he scrambles away from Sam instead, breathing in shallow pants and scrubbing at his mouth.

“Fuck!” he shouts.

He tries to shout, anyway. Nothing comes out. Dean opens his mouth for a second attempt—just a wordless shout this time—and there’s nothing but silence.

Goddamn it.

He grabs the collar, trying to yank it off, and can’t find a catch. The metal throbs beneath his fingers, and even in the midst of his rising panic he remembers his previous thought—that it felt alive. It makes his stomach swoop unnervingly: a sensation that’s only worsened by the accompanying realization that his pulse has synched up to the damned thing.

Horror turns him around with several stumbling steps and he stares down at Sam, who hasn’t bothered to get up off the floor. Sam’s hair is mussed in that stupid way like it sometimes gets, and his lips are a little swollen—probably from Dean’s frenzied attempts to force himself inside. He looks debauched, sitting up on his elbows with his legs spread wide and his crotch angled to show off the bulge of his erection. Debauched and smug about it.

“I guess this means you don’t want to finish,” Sam says, voice a little too breathy to support the nonchalant front he’s doing his best to project. His eyes dip, traveling quickly over Dean’s body before returning to his face, and the throb of the collar skips momentarily, dragging Dean’s heart along with it.

Dean’s suddenly certain that if he pressed his hand to his brother’s chest, the rhythm of Sam’s heartbeat would match the one pulsing around his neck and through his own body exactly. It’s a whole new level of connection that Dean is in no way prepared to handle—he already has trouble thinking for himself when it comes to Sam, now he’s supposed to share his brother’s heartbeat?

Dean can’t get any words out, but he isn’t sure what he’d say to this clusterfuck anyway, so he settles for gesturing wildly at the collar, at his damp crotch, at Sam. His brother nods as though any of that made sense—probably did; Sam must know what Dean’s feeling better than he does, just like always.

“Don’t worry,” Sam says now, finally getting up with nothing more than a faint grimace for his unrelieved erection. “The spell had to set. It should be calming down now.”

The effects of the collar might be calming—although if this is calm, it still isn’t comfortable—but Dean sure as hell isn’t. He wants the damned thing off yesterday. He wants it gone—not just out of his sight, but out of fucking existence.

It digs into his throat as he swallows—a concrete, nagging reminder—and leaves him feeling soiled and dirty at how much he enjoyed what just happened. How good it felt. Shuddering, he wipes his hand against the side of his sweats before remembering what’s smeared to the inside of the fabric and jerking his hand away again with a full-bodied flinch.

Not that he can get away from himself, from what he did. What he still—despite the feelings of disgust and shame—sort of wants to do again.

Sam’s pleased expression falters as Dean shakes his head and takes a single, shaky step backward.

“Dean?” he says hesitantly, reaching out. “Dean, what’s—”

Dean jerks away, moving both sideways and backwards out of range. His heart tries to race and can’t, chained as it is to Sam’s slower rhythm. The rest of his body is straining after panic, sweat breaking cold across his skin and thoughts racing, but his heart and lungs remain stubbornly steady. The contradiction makes his head hurt: a stabbing, shredding feeling that spreads through his whole body and leaves him even more desperate and panicked than before.

But his heart won’t speed, no matter how much his brain is telling him it should, and he reaches up, pressing both heels of his palms against his head in a futile effort to make it stop—to make the two fracturing halves of his psyche stop splitting and meld back together. It’s a little like being filled with the whine of microphone feedback, continuous and crescendoing instead of dying off after a brief screech the way it should. It hurts—oh God, it hurts—but Dean can’t calm himself down, he can’t, he fucking—

Sam’s power clamps down over him—heavy, molten bands that catch his thoughts and stop them in their tracks. A moment later there’s another flare of power and calm floods him, tasting like cinnamon and honey and Sam. The pain stops instantly. Dean would whimper in relief if he weren’t feeling so mellow. If he could get the noise past his lips.

Calm or not, he can’t help acknowledging how odd the sensation is: being cradled by that dampening power without while simultaneously being stroked by a possessive purr of power within. Two opposing, vastly different forces, but both of them Sam—Sam, who is everywhere, who has been transmuted to energy and is finally possessing Dean, all of him, from the marrow of his bones to the spiced air flowing past his lips and down into his lungs.

His mouth opens on a silent moan and Sam is there in the next moment, gathering him up in his arm and lifting him effortlessly.

“Shh,” Sam whispers, nuzzling Dean’s cheek as he carries him across the room.

Dean’s confused by the contact—how can Sam be touching his skin when Sam’s inside of him? How can he be solid when he’s energy? How can he love Dean so much and keep hurting him like this?

Dean tries to squirm out of his brother’s arms and manages to flap one arm sluggishly. Sam lays him down somewhere soft—the bed—and then sits beside him. His hand finds Dean’s hair and strokes while the conflicting pressures of his power shift around, searching for a more comfortable balance. It takes a few minutes for him to find it, but finally there’s an almost audible click and the confusion clouding Dean's mind lifts.

Dean's still calm, and his thoughts are slow, but he gets that Sam is separate from the power. He understands that the collar is responsible for his messed-up heartbeat and the possessive, languid strokes along his soul. The rest of it—the golden molasses slowing down his brain and dampening his emotions—is Sam running damage control.

When he cracks his eyes, he finds his brother looking down at him with a serious, worried expression.

“I didn’t think this would freak you out so much,” Sam says, cupping Dean’s cheek. “I swear, Dean, I never would have done it if I’d known.”

Maybe it’s just the continuing, doubled thrum of Sam’s power, but Dean believes him. He stirs slightly as he feels Sam’s mind ease into his, light as a rain of rose petals.

“Can you talk to me, baby? Tell me what I can do to help?”

After a long lapse, where Dean struggles to understand both what Sam is asking and what the answer might be, he thinks, _Off._

“Baby, I can’t,” Sam says, thumbing Dean’s cheekbone. “It’s a time release. I can’t get it off before it’s set to open, not without hurting you.”

 _Hurts now,_ Dean manages, even though that isn’t precisely true. Thanks to Sam, right now all he has to deal with is the memory of pain. That’s more than bad enough, though, and despite the imposed calm he wants the collar gone.

“Taking it off too soon would be worse, trust me,” Sam responds. He stretches out alongside Dean, lying down on one elbow and easing his free hand up beneath Dean’s hoodie. Dean thinks of Sam’s fingers pinching at his nipple, but Sam stops before he gets that far. Resting his hand over Dean’s stomach, he starts to rub slow, soothing circles into Dean's skin.

“You can handle this, okay?” he says. “You just need to calm down and stop fighting it. The collar’s attuned to me, see?”

He moves his hand up again to brush his fingertips against the metal, and the contact sends an echo of emotion through Dean. There’s concern there, and contentment and love and, buried deep _(as though Sam is deliberately trying to hide it from him)_ , something else. Something darker. A boundless, consuming hunger mingled with desperation and shot through with pain so cold and intense it burns everything it touches.

Jesus Christ, is that Sam? Is _that_ what’s hiding at Sam’s core?

Despite the numbing calm, Dean's a little alarmed by the prospect and he moves his eyes restlessly over his brother's face, looking for a hint of that freezing, desolate agony in Sam's expression. Something in his own expression gives his concern away—or maybe Sam tastes it flavoring his thoughts—and his brother frowns. A moment later, the darkness and the ice disappear, drowned in a redoubled, cherishing flood. Dean relaxes into his brother's devotion as it washes through him in drenching waves, lapping over and through the softer brush of power.

“See?” Sam whispers as he goes back to stroking Dean’s stomach. “It’s just me. Just so I can love you better. So that you won’t miss me when I’m away. It isn’t going to hurt you.”

Dean’s pretty sure something’s off in that explanation, but there’s too much of Sam in his head and not enough of him, and he can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. Can’t put up much of a fight against the emotions flooding him, either.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” Sam offers. “I have to go to the front—it’s too important to play hooky—but I can leave a little later than I was planning to. So we’re going to sit here and I’ll just ease you into thinking and feeling on your own, okay? So that you don’t get panicked again?”

Distantly, Dean hears a knock at the door and Sam’s hand on his stomach stills.

“Hold on!” he yells, glancing away. When his eyes return to Dean’s face, he offers him a soft smile and murmurs, “Ruby’s here with the slaves, baby. I’m going to let them in, but first I want to clean you off and get you into some new pants, alright?”

Dean doesn’t actually care right now, but Sam seems to think it’s a good idea, and Dean’s having enough trouble thinking that he’s willing to go along with it. Sam loves him, after all. Sam wants to cherish and protect him.

Dean concentrates and manages a floppy, loose nod.

“Good boy,” Sam approves. With one last pat of Dean’s stomach, he pushes up and climbs off the bed.

Some of the numbing power goes with him—enough so that Dean regains some rudimentary control over his body. His thoughts are still sluggish and plodding, his chest filled with Sam’s emotions instead of his own, but he’s able to start pushing his sweats down with clumsy, stiff motions. He gets confused somewhere around his knees—can’t figure out how to coordinate his arms and legs to finish ridding himself of the fabric—but Sam reappears before he can do more than frown down at his stupid, rebellious body.

With Sam helping, Dean is stripped and rolled over onto his back within moments. Dean watches as his brother wipes down his cock and thighs with a damp, warm cloth before drying his skin off again. Sam is gentle as ever, but the cleaning lacks the sensuality of their earlier shower, and Dean’s left only with an impression of tender intimacy.

It’s comforting amid the steady flow of power into his body from the collar, and Dean is unresisting as Sam works him into a fresh pair of sweats. The old sweats, facecloth and towel are lumped together and tossed carelessly onto the floor as Sam gets back on the bed. Sliding in between Dean and the headboard, he pulls Dean up against his chest and wraps his arms around him.

The connection between them strengthens at the contact, leaving Dean safe and sleepy, and he lets his head loll back against his brother’s shoulder.

“Okay, Ruby,” Sam calls. The vibration of his voice runs down Dean’s spine to pool in his stomach, liquid and warm.

As the door opens, Dean thoughtlessly twists his head to the side so that he can rub his nose against Sam’s throat. The scent of his brother, familiar and comforting, floods him. Sam’s fingers find his hair and comb through it.

Dean smiles to himself: so content he doesn’t even mind when Ruby’s voice cuts into their pleasant cocoon.

“Don’t you have a war to be fighting?”

“I’ll go in a little bit,” Sam answers. “Right now, Dean needs me.”

“I am capable of keeping him out of trouble for a few hours, you know.”

“I know that. It’s just—he had a little panic attack. And I'd just put the collar on him, and he got caught in a feedback loop—didn’t you, Dean?”

Dean tilts his head into his brother’s caresses, wishing he could make an appreciative noise when Sam’s hand slides down the back of his neck to smooth possessively along the collar.

“That isn’t going to kill him,” Ruby points out.

The steady, loving hum of Sam’s emotions inside of Dean’s chest darkens momentarily, making Dean stir. Almost immediately, though, Sam is shushing him and laying light kisses on his forehead. The loving, worshipful buzz strengthens again.

“Shh, baby,” Sam murmurs. “I’m not mad at you.” There’s a brief pause and then, in a colder voice that Dean instinctually senses isn’t directed at him, Sam continues, “If you ever suggest to me that I leave him here alone when he’s upset and in pain again, I’ll rip you out of that meatsuit and put you in a sow. The fattest, filthiest one I can find. Are we clear?”

Ruby goes away after that—or at least she doesn’t say anything more, which is pretty much the same thing since all of Dean’s focus is concentrated on the places where Sam is touching him, inside and out. Except even that isn't enough after a few minutes—he needs more, needs to be closer. Twisting around in his brother’s arms, he straddles Sam’s hips and wraps his own arms around Sam’s chest. This is better—Dean can smell Sam now, and his brother's mouth is unexpectedly accessible and slightly parted for him.

He takes advantage of that fact to kiss his brother several times before Sam, chuckling in a way that leaves Dean warm all over, gently disengages and presses Dean’s head down against his shoulder. At Dean’s reproachful glance, he smiles in a funny way _(except Dean's sure he'd know what that expression means if he could think straighter)_ and brushes his knuckles over Dean’s cheek.

“You’ll thank me later,” he says, and his voice is cheerful enough, but there’s a lump in Dean’s chest that tells him his brother isn’t as happy as he’s pretending to be.

The possibility that Sam is sad bothers him, but the contradiction between Sam’s expression and Sam’s voice is too confusing to handle with his thoughts so heavy and honeyed, and in the end Dean settles for shifting until his ear is resting over his brother’s heart and shutting his eyes. Sam’s hand drifts casually over his back and through his hair, and Dean really doesn’t know how he got lucky enough to be loved so completely.

For a while, Dean floats there in a timeless, contented fugue, but gradually other details start to filter in. He can hear things being banged around the room, and the low murmur of voices that aren’t Sam, and eventually he realizes that Sam has begun to ease out of Dean’s head and back into his own.

Dean’s emotions first reassert themselves as a trickle of humiliation at the back of his mind, and after a long delay he traces it to the fact that he’s pretty much snuggling with the Boy King—his brother—like some kind of lovesick chick while the seven workers from yesterday go about their business. It’s more embarrassing than getting caught kissing was—this is more intimate, tangled up in emotion rather than physical need—and Dean stirs, trying to push away from his brother’s embrace.

“Gently,” Sam breathes. His fingers tap the collar, reminding Dean why he’s in this position to begin with, and Dean grimaces at the memory of how it felt when he let his emotions get the better of him. What did Sam call it? A feedback loop? Well, whatever it was, he doesn’t want it happening again.

With a quick nod to show he understands, Dean tries to move away again, and this time Sam lets him. There’s marked reluctance in the way he watches Dean crawl over to sit on the edge of the bed, but the only thing he says is, “Better?”

Not really, no. Sam’s heartbeat is still dictating Dean’s own, and Dean’s having trouble reconciling the Sam who had no trouble kissing him when he was under the influence of a magical aphrodisiac with the Sam who refused to let Dean make out with him while he was under the calming influence of Sam’s power. He can’t figure out whether to feel grateful for the consideration or frightened by how changeable Sam is these days or really, really pissed off at how easy it is for his brother to manipulate him.

But after a brief hesitation, Dean nods. At least there’s no panic this time, which means no more feedback loop. Apparently, he can be mortified and have a steady heartbeat at the same time without freaking out about it.

“Good,” Sam says, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be home for dinner tonight, okay? We’ll eat and then we can take the collar off.”

Dean nods a third time, dropping his eyes to the floor, and after a moment he feels his brother ease off the opposite end of the bed. He doesn’t hear Sam leave, but he feels it—feels the increasing distance on the inside, where it doesn’t show.

But the collar is throbbing around his throat, and the bracelets are heavy around his wrists, and his back feels warm and loose with the casual slide of his brother’s power, and Dean guesses that Sam isn’t all that far off after all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There are a whole host of problems with the collar.

For starters, it’s too tight. Dean’s painfully aware of every time he takes a breath. It digs into his throat when he swallows. He wishes that the reminder of Sam’s ownership made him uncomfortable, but while a part of him _is_ cringing, the shame isn’t strong enough to drown out the aroused flush that takes him whenever he thinks of Sam’s hands on him—of how fucking awesome it felt to rub up against his brother’s body without worrying about the consequences.

The heartbeat thing is weird too, and he has to work at avoiding another feedback loop whenever he thinks too long and too hard about just how close he is to giving in. And then there are the moments when his heart races for no reason at all, and he knows that somewhere halfway across the country Sam’s either in danger or killing a shitload of people. He can’t decide which possibility upsets him more, which brings a whole new level of fucked up to his day.

The biggest problem with the collar, though, is the constant hum of power it keeps funneling into him. Dean doesn’t notice at first—too concerned with his embarrassment and the heartbeat issues—but as he adjusts to the situation, it becomes more and more apparent that the trickle of power running into him through the collar is having the same effect Sam’s power usually does. Which means that Dean is left nursing a low, staticky arousal that seems to grow in intensity the more he tries to ignore it.

He tries to distract himself by watching the workmen again, and by trying to work out whether or not any of them are having similar issues with the hardware around their necks _(he thinks not: the collar is just another toy Sam had custom-made, like the cuffs and the tattoo)_ , but eventually it becomes impossible to think of anything else because the arousal keeps building.

What starts off as a low-grade hum against his insides intensifies into warm, stroking pressure over his skin. Around lunchtime, when Ruby makes him choke down half a burger, the sensation sharpens further: there are hands now, moving under his clothes. Dean can’t make any noise without his voice, but his throat locks up in a painful way that he associates with a grunt when one of the hands slides between his ass cheeks and rubs at the sensitive skin just behind his balls.

Ruby gives him a calculating look as she takes the plate away, and Dean rolls over on his side, turning his back on the demon bitch and the workmen in one movement. As Ruby chuckles—Dean isn’t sure whether she knows what’s going on, or if she’s just pleased to see him so uncomfortable—he kicks down the sheets, crawling beneath them and then pulling them back up to his neck.

Gritting his teeth, he reaches down and cups himself protectively in the vain hope that the sensation of a real touch will rid him of all those other, intangible caresses. Instead, his hand on his cock only centers the invisible attention there as well, and what feel like hundreds of hands close over his cock and fondle his balls. Jerking his hand away, Dean grips the bed sheets instead and turns his face into the pillows with a silent pant. After a few, agonizing minutes, the touches drift again as the power diffuses through his body.

“You could just get yourself off,” Ruby says from behind him. “I promise not to watch.”

Well, that answers that question anyway.

Dean unlocks one hand from the sheets long enough to give her the finger over his shoulder and then squares his jaw and concentrates on keeping his breathing even and not working himself up into another feedback loop.

Within an hour, the phantom hands are joined by tongues: licking over his shoulders and stomach before dipping lower. Dean’s cock wasn’t exactly uninterested before, but now it leaps to attention, jerking and smearing precome against the inside of his sweats. One of the tongues slides down his spine to delve into his crack, licking insistently around the tight ring of his pucker, and Dean’s eyes widen. Rolling over onto his back, he squeezes his thighs together and clenches his ass in a reflexive attempt to keep the maddening, intrusive touch away.

It works as well as everything else he’s tried, and after a few seconds of feeling a tongue moving where there isn’t actually room for it, he flops over onto his stomach and spreads his legs instead. At least in this position his head doesn’t keep on insisting that what’s happening to him is physically impossible. He wonders, briefly, what he looks like right now, and then decides that he doesn’t want to know.

If he thought he could make it, he’d take himself to the relative privacy of the bathroom and shut the door behind him, but he doesn’t think his legs would support him that long. Anyway, he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Better to just lie here and take it.

But fuck, he prays that the workmen aren’t any more inclined to look over at him today than they were yesterday.

It’s still light when Sam comes back. Dean’s relieved to sense him coming and he lifts his head a few seconds before his brother opens the door. His expression is desperate and pleading, and he knows that Sam isn’t going to be sympathetic—Sam did this to him, the fucker—but he’s unable to keep from begging any way he can.

Except Sam looks startled when he meets Dean’s eyes, not smug. He moves forward immediately, anxious and frowning. “Dean? What’s wrong?”

Dean gives his head an imperceptible shake and then shudders as illusory moisture swipes across the head of his cock and phantom fingers rub against his nipples.

The high, unpleasantly girlish sound of Ruby’s laughter drifts over from the direction of Sam’s armchair. The sharp glance Sam tosses in her direction tells Dean that his brother is anything but amused.

“You aren’t shielding, Sam,” Ruby says. “Didn’t anyone tell you the collar translates fantasies?”

Even in his distracted state, Dean has no trouble understanding what that means. It means that Sam has been thinking about him all day. That he’s been thinking of touching Dean—licking him—while he was on the front lines murdering God only knows how many innocent people. Sam’s control over how much of his desire bled through to the collar must have been steadily deteriorating since he left.

Dean wonders whether he would have found himself getting fucked and sucked if Sam had stayed away a few hours more. Or maybe there would have been a phantom cock in his mouth instead—they both used to enjoy that.

Sam blinks and the tongues and hands stop immediately. The low-grade arousal remains, but Dean supposes that, at this point, that might be his own fault. Sam looks at him a moment longer and then shifts his gaze over to Ruby.

“Why didn’t you contact me?”

“This was more fun,” Ruby answers, and then there’s a faint rustle as she turns the page of one of her magazines.

Sam’s power surges in the room—he’s not actually angry yet, but verging on it. The electric pulse of energy is a threat, unmistakable, but Ruby laughs in the face of it. Dean can’t tell if she’s really brave or just fatally stupid.

“Oh, come on, Sam. If I’d told you, you would’ve stopped, and really—isn’t that a nice sight to come home to?” There’s a slap as she drops the magazine back onto its stack, and then the creak of the seat cushion as she shifts her weight in the chair.

Sam looks back toward Dean again, and as his eyes flick over Dean’s face, the annoyance in his expression sharpens and heats. There’s a momentary flicker of brighter gold and suddenly the tongues and hands are back. There are even more of them this time, rubbing and licking Dean everywhere, and before he can even suck in a breath, teeth dig into his nipples and the nape of his neck. A mouth sucks at his bottom lip, another closes around his cock, slurping him down into something warm and wet and completely intangible, and fuck, is Sam trying to kill him?

Dean’s lashes flutter as he blinks rapidly, trying to keep from coming all over himself, and then there’s thick, blunt pressure against his ass. He starts to shake his head—fuck, he can’t; Sam can’t fucking _do_ this to him—and the phantom cock dematerializes as it pushes inside. The rest of the touches fall away as well, leaving Dean trembling and cradling his over stimulated erection.

Sam’s still watching him, drinking in his expression, and Dean does his best not to look as well fucked as he feels. The sight of him is clearly doing things to his brother, though, because their shared heartbeat picks up, excited. God, Dean needs the collar off _now_.

Sam turns away in abrupt dismissal, striding around the foot of the bed and out of sight. “Ruby, my office,” he says as he goes. “The rest of you, back to your quarters.”

For the first time all day, Dean’s heart is beating the way he wants it to _(if not for the right reason)_ and he feels enough like himself to lift his head and watch the workmen file out the door. A couple of them actually glance at him as they walk past—Bashful and Happy, and Grumpy too, as he brings up the rear.

Grumpy meets Dean’s eyes the longest—at least five seconds of contact, which is an entire conversation in comparison to what Dean’s been trying to live off of. He lifts his head higher, knowing he looks desperate for acknowledgement and not caring—fuck, he _is_ desperate. There’s no point in pretending otherwise after the guy listened to him pant and writhe all day. Grumpy’s expression flickers—some emotion Dean can’t decode—and he gives a slight jerk of his head before disappearing out into the hall.

A look. And a nod. That’s something, right? That’s fucking War and Peace when it’s obvious Sam doesn’t want anyone to have anything to do with Dean.

Dean rolls onto his back as the door shuts behind Grumpy and stares at the ceiling while wondering if Bobby is more mobile than he is. If Bobby was maybe able to talk to these men. He wonders if that’s what that nod meant—if it was a yes, if it was a promise that help is coming.

Maybe this is the help the blue-eyed Sam from Dean’s dreams was talking about.

Hope tastes strange in his mouth, and he seems to have lost all tolerance for the emotion, acting giddy and drunken all through dinner. When Sam finally gets the collar off and Dean’s voice floods back into him, he even manages a laugh. Sam eyes him suspiciously at the sound, and Dean’s heartbeat _(his own again, thank God)_ gives a kick.

Rubbing his neck, he takes a step back and makes himself laugh again—shakier this time, trying to imbue it with that slight, hysterical edge. It isn’t hard, especially when he glances at the harmless-looking circle of metal in his brother's hands.

“Get rid of it,” he rasps, gesturing at the collar. “Break it, melt it down, I don’t fucking care, just—just get rid of it.”

“Okay,” Sam agrees, setting the collar down on the coffee table. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

Despite his brother’s promise, Dean can’t bring himself to take his eyes off the thing—can’t focus with it sitting there and staring at him. Finally, Sam gets tired of the competition and puts one of Ruby’s leftover magazines over it before taking Dean to bed to distract him.

Dean lies still while his brother echoes the touches he’s had to endure all day and thinks about Grumpy. He thinks about finally getting to communicate with Bobby and working up a plan to get out of here.

Maybe, just maybe, the old saying about things looking darkest before the dawn is true after all.


	4. Chapter 4

They fall into a routine.

There are no more choices in the morning, just Sam thinking up new places in the room where he wants to be kissed. Just Sam being as charming and seductive as he knows how and trying to make Dean forget himself the way he did that first day.

Dean’s on guard at first, resolve strengthened by the fresh bloom of hope within, so it’s easy enough to stick to business and pull away as soon as Sam is finished sealing off his voice. As the days turn to weeks, though, he realizes that he’s getting more and more used to doing this. The unhappy anticipation of Sam’s mouth on his melts to familiarity and acceptance, and from there it’s not difficult to slip into enjoying it, just a little.

Worse, crawling into Sam’s lap and making out with him for a few minutes every morning and then doing it all over again at night, is making it harder to refuse Sam’s advances at other times. After all, what are a couple more stolen kisses after dinner or just before bed when Dean’s already putting out with habitual regularity?

And then it happens.

One morning, less than two weeks into their new arrangement, Dean gets so caught up with the way their mouths fit together that he lets Sam manhandle him from the window where they were standing over to the wall. When his brother’s hands land on his hips and hoist, Dean wraps both legs around Sam’s waist without giving it a second thought. Hooking one arm around Sam’s shoulders to keep him close and catching hold of the lamp fixture beside him with his other hand for balance, he starts grinding down onto his brother while they fight for control of the kiss.

“On me,” Sam mumbles between licks and sucks. “Got you ... hands on me ... won’t let you ... fall.”

Dean takes him at his word, releasing the lamp in favor of groping for smooth skin and panting into his brother’s mouth.

When Ruby clears her throat and brings Dean crashing back to reality, he’s actually doing his damnedest to pop the top button on his brother’s pants with one hand.

Dean’s chest lurches and he jerks his hands off of Sam with a silent curse. Twisting his head away, he unhooks his legs and leans his weight away from his brother and back into the wall. The press of Sam’s body and the tight grip of Sam’s hands on his ass keep him from falling to the floor, but it’s awkward and a little painful—puts way too much pressure on Dean’s groin where it’s snugged up against his brother’s—and he’s relieved for more than one reason when Sam eases him back down onto his own feet.

He expects his brother to be angry at the interruption, but Sam just chuckles and lays a lingering kiss against the pulse point on Dean’s throat. “Now I’m gonna be distracted all day,” he husks. The warmth in his voice makes it a shared joke, as though Dean intended to do that.

Flushing, Dean presses his lips together against the frustrated scream that he wouldn’t be able to make anyway. Sam brushes a hand through his hair with a smile and then steps away, heading out for the front lines.

Dean swears he won’t let it happen again, but it’s only a couple of days before he has his hands full of Sam in the shower, cocks bumping together in the spray as he cradles his brother’s face and does his best to brand his own possession into Sam with kiss after kiss. At least he gets himself out of that one, startling back to reality when one of Sam’s oversized hands slips between his cheeks to rub over his entrance.

He scrambles out of the shower fast enough that he knocks his elbow against the wall—almost falls when his bare feet slip on the tiles. Sam doesn’t say anything: just stands in the spray with water running over his broad, muscular form and watches, smirking, while Dean grabs a towel and hurries out into the main room.

 _Last time,_ Dean thinks to himself, shaken by how goddamned close he came. _This is_ it.

But it isn’t.

He dreams of the blue-eyed version of his brother again, more than once. Dream Sam always looks at him with sad, hangdog eyes, and it’s harmless but more uncomfortable than the real Sam’s regard. Feels like the kid is staring right through all the muscle and blood and bone into Dean’s soul, pathetic and twisted as it is.

“You have to be strong,” Dream Sam says, and after the shower incident: “You’re playing with fire, Dean.”

Like he doesn’t fucking _know_ that. Like he’d be doing this if there were any other options left open to him.

Sometimes, Dream Sam apologizes. He tells Dean that things shouldn’t have happened like this, that Dean has another Destiny. He says it isn’t too late to put a stop to it.

“To what?” Dean asks, although in his head he’s thinking of Central Park on fire; of the broken, ash-strewn wasteland he can see from his window these days. He’s thinking of the workmen and their collars, of the bloodied, broken walls they’re dismantling and replacing. Of the carpet being torn up to reveal pools of congealed blood on the floorboards beneath.

He’s thinking of Sam.

“Armageddon,” Dream Sam answers, voice hushed and sorrowful.

Sometimes, Dream Sam kisses him, and he apologizes for that as well. He says that it’s wrong, that he shouldn’t, and that more than anything else tells Dean that whatever force is mucking around in his head while he sleeps, it isn’t Sam. Those aren’t thoughts that ever passed his brother’s lips, not once in all their convoluted, shared history.

Dean feels a little guilty about those kisses himself—partially because he’s usually the one initiating. Kissing Dream Sam is different than kissing the real version, is the thing. Kissing Dream Sam settles things inside him, and fills him with a soft light that feels almost like grace. But he can’t deny that part of the guilt stems from the fact that it feels like cheating, it feels like betrayal, and he knows full well how the real Sam would react if he knew what Dean’s doing here.

He doesn’t feel guilty enough to stop, though.

In the waking world, work on the room progresses, bookended by searing kisses and the taste of Sam’s power in his mouth and throat. Dean continues to exchange meaningful glances with Grumpy—gets within six feet of the man once before Ruby notices and calls him away with a sharp, warning tone. As a mother hen, the bitch is almost worse than Sam, and after that incident she makes it her duty to keep Dean occupied and close to her side.

Dean isn’t sure where she digs them up, but she starts appearing with board games. Candyland _(just looking at the box makes Dean’s stomach rumble)_ first, along with a version of Snakes and Ladders that has to be some demon’s idea of a good time—the snakes have gaping jaws and fangs, and the bottom of the board is decorated with torture scenes and twisted, desolate landscapes. Dean refuses to touch either, and although Ruby rolls her eyes she comes back the next day with Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. Dean flips her off and spends the day sitting quietly on the bed.

That night, Sam comes away from his conversation with Ruby with hurt eyes and a downcast expression. “I thought you liked Monopoly,” he says, sitting down next to Dean and running a restless hand up and down Dean’s thigh.

There’s nothing of the Boy King in him in that moment, and Dean feels comfortable enough to roll his eyes and lean over so he can take his voice back. He kisses Sam until the honey taste leaves his tongue and then pulls off to reply, “I’m not playing games with a fucking _demon_ , Sam.”

Sam blinks, like the thought hadn’t actually occurred to him. Given the company he keeps these days and his areas of interest _(Dean and war and Dean and ripping people apart and Dean)_ , Dean guesses he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Ruby’s not bad,” Sam says after a moment.

“She’s a demon,” Dean snorts. “That’s pretty much the definition of ‘bad’.” He starts to pull away and Sam’s hand tightens on his thigh, holding him there.

“I don’t like thinking of you sitting around with nothing to do.”

With nothing to keep him out of trouble, is what he means.

“I can manage,” Dean mutters. He grabs his brother’s wrist, meaning to pull his hand off, and finds himself tossed down onto his back instead by a stray gust of power. The cuffs heat, dragging his arms up above his head and coming together with a faint, metallic click. Dean’s pulse soars and he gives an instinctive buck, fighting the restraint.

“Shh,” Sam says. His hand finds Dean’s side and pushes up beneath the hoodie to fondle his hipbone.

“I’m not in the fucking mood,” Dean growls, trying to sound angrier than he is. Actually, he’s more annoyed than anything else, which is a little worrisome. He should be freaking out right now: shouldn’t be viewing this as just another one of Sam’s irritating habits.

Sam ignores him, moving to straddle his body and lowering his weight down over Dean’s crotch. Dean’s gut gives a heated little pulse and his bites down on his lower lip to keep from grunting.

“I want you to get to know Ruby,” Sam says, pushing the hoodie up high enough to bare Dean’s stomach and lower chest. “She isn’t going anywhere, and neither are you. And I don’t want you to be lonely while I’m gone.”

Dean isn’t sure what part of this conversation is the most ludicrous—the fact that only half of Sam’s attention is on what he’s saying _(the rest of it is focused on scraping his nails over Dean’s bare skin)_ , the fact that he’s encouraging Dean to hang out with a demon, or the fact that he actually seems to want Dean to interact with someone who isn’t Sam.

After a couple of seconds, Dean recovers from the absurdity of the situation and grunts, “You don’t want me lonely? Fine. Let me see Bobby.”

Sam’s mouth quirks. “You know I can’t do that, baby.”

“I don’t have to go down there,” Dean points out, flinching a little as Sam scrapes over a ticklish spot. “You could—you could bring him up here.”

The brief flash of humor Sam was showing a moment ago disappears at the suggestion and his hands still. His mouth is set in a serious line as he looks down at Dean.

“We’ve been over this, Dean,” he says flatly, and something about the finality of that statement gets into Dean’s gut and makes his annoyance flare to anger.

“I’m not playing footsie with a goddamned demon!” he insists, bucking his hips in an attempt to unseat his brother.

It’s a mistake.

Sam’s hand closes over Dean’s throat, tight enough to restrict his airflow but not quite tight enough to bruise. His power licks over Dean’s body, making his cock fill with a painful rush. It spills into the tattoo, setting off the sunbursts of memory that Dean’s starting to get used to, but which are still really fucking distracting.

As he watches Sam-at-two run laughing around a motel room on stubby little legs in his head, the man his brother has become hisses, “You’re not playing footsie with _anyone_ , Dean. You’re mine. You so much as look at anyone else and I’ll garland the room with their fucking intestines, are we clear?”

And there’s the fear Dean should have been feeling all along. He has no clue how he could have forgotten: how Sam’s hands on him and Sam’s casual displays of power and ownership could have become routine enough to be shrugged off. It doesn’t feel routine now, though—it feels claustrophobic and terrifying, with all of Sam’s need pouring down on him and through him and cutting off his air.

“Are. We. Clear.”

“Yeah,” Dean gasps. “We’re clear.”

“Good.” The flow of Sam’s power backs off and his grip on Dean’s throat eases. His thumb rubs back and forth over Dean’s Adam’s apple, stroking.

When Ruby brings out the board games the next day, Dean ignores the resentful flutter of hate in his chest and sits down across from her. He’s probably imagining it, but he can feel his brother’s approval from here.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean shakes the dice in their red plastic cup for a few seconds before spilling them out onto the table. Ruby’s eyes are on the spread of the roll, so he steals a moment to look over at the workmen where they’re spackling the ceiling by the bed. Grumpy looks back at him—another moment of connection, which have been coming with increasing frequency—and Dean’s hands clench into fists. It’s frustrating to be so close to the man and yet so far from actual contact: to know that he’s less than twelve feet from probable salvation and yet be unable to do anything about it.

“Yahtzee. Again,” Ruby grumbles across from him, and then immediately demands, “Are you cheating? You’re cheating, aren’t you?”

Dean isn’t, actually. He could give a crap whether he wins or not—he’s just always been lucky with dice, and with cards. Not that it makes up for all the other times Lady Luck has fucked him over.

He glances back at the table with a voiceless sigh and checks off the appropriate box on his scorecard while Ruby gathers the dice back up for her own throw. Dean isn’t sure why she’s bothering: as it stands right now, she’d have to throw nothing but sixes for the rest of her turns in order to come out ahead. From the way that she’s frowning at the red cup, black flickering across her eyes, though, she’s going to give that the old demonic try.

Sure enough, when the dice tumble out across the table, this time Dean feels a trickle of power and watches without surprise as they all come to rest on six. “Yahtzee,” Ruby announces with a lopsided smile. Her eyes dart up, daring Dean to accuse her of cheating. As if he cares.

He shrugs slightly to indicate that she can do what she wants and reaches for the dice.

And that’s when a thundering rush of sound shakes the suite around them. The dice jitter on the table, the lights flicker wildly before going dark. One of the workmen’s ladders topples over, spilling Happy to the floor with a startled shout.

Dean is up before the sound and the vibrations have faded, rushing to the window so that he can look outside for the source of what he’s sure was a massive explosion. Somewhere close, too, from the sound of things. Ruby is at his shoulder immediately, but Dean ignores her in favor of checking to see that the MET is still standing in the midst of the rubble. It is, which makes his chest loosen slightly in relief, and as he turns his attention to the rest of the view he realizes that nothing looks any different than it did before. There’s no fire, no plume of smoke.

“Other side,” Ruby mutters, already turning away before Dean has finished agreeing with her assessment of the situation. “Stay here and don’t get into any trouble. And you!” she adds, pointing at the workers as she strides toward the door. “No slacking off!”

Heart still beating too quickly, Dean turns back to the window. He chews on his lip and looks out on the burnt-out ruin of the city—at the blackened but intact shape of the MET in the distance—and wonders whether that was friendly fire _(take that, bitches)_ or an actual attack _(even better)_. He hopes fervently that whatever exploded didn’t take out too many humans, although he doesn’t see how that can be avoided with so many demons in human meat suits running around.

A shape moves in the glass—a reflection of something behind him—and Dean spins. He wishes he could say that his hands come up into a guard position, but they don’t. It’s been too long, and he’s out of practice.

There’s no danger anyway, he sees. It’s just Grumpy. Just the man he’s been playing eye tag with for the past month, standing less than a foot away and with no interfering demons in sight. Dean is too stunned by how close they finally are to react as Grumpy scowls in his direction and feels around in his pocket for something.

After a moment, the man comes up with what he was looking for and holds it up, opening his hand and dropping a piece of metal to hang from his fingers on a black cord. Dean’s breath catches as he recognizes it as the amulet Sam gave him back when they were kids. His chest clenches and his eyes burn alarmingly.

He thought it was gone. Thought it got destroyed when Sam showed up at the church.

“Bobby Singer said to give this to you,” Grumpy announces.

 _Bobby,_ Dean thinks. The name goes through his whole body with the shivery, cool shock of relief, and his hand is trembling as he reaches out to take the amulet. Grumpy releases the cord as Dean’s hand closes around the small metal face on the end, leaving the amulet in his possession once again—this mark of Sam’s love for him back when it was pure, back when they were both innocent and too young to hurt anybody.

Clenching his hand into a fist around the amulet, Dean relishes the feel of the horns digging into his palm: worn, familiar angles. The hope he’s spent the last four weeks clinging to flutters higher as he entertains the idea that the explosion was Bobby’s doing. That it was designed to get Ruby out of the way so they could finally move forward with the rescue plan.

Blinking away the sting in his eyes, he looks back up at Grumpy expectantly. Waiting for more news.

Instead, the man spits on him.

Dean flinches, shocked, as the glob slides down his cheek. He’s been through a lot of crap in his life, but he’s never been spit on before and it’s a surprisingly humiliating experience. He’s never been looked at the way he realizes Grumpy is looking at him either, like he’s something filthy and perverse. Something subhuman.

“That’s from me, though,” the man adds. “For my murdered wife and my baby girl.”

The other men are drifting over now, and Dean’s brain is still working well enough beneath the layer of humiliated shock to wish they wouldn’t: to wish they’d go away and not look at him when he feels like this. His vision is blurring and he doesn’t want it to. Doesn’t want to cry in front of these men like goddamned girl.

“Hey, Dave,” Sneezy says. “Come away from it.”

Come away from _it_. Like Dean is—like he’s some kind of thing, and not a person at all.

He wants to be furious and can’t remember how to feel anything but shamed and broken. His chest twists, heart pounding rapidly, and he shrinks back against the window, pressing up against the cool glass. His hand comes up, shaking, to wipe away the spit while one of the other men—Happy or Bashful, it’s hard to tell which through his blurred vision—puts a hand on Sneezy’s arm.

“She’s sixteen,” Grumpy continues more vehemently, ignoring the touch. “My baby girl and they gave her to a maggot as a goddamned breeder!”

Dean doesn’t know what the man means by ‘maggot’—his own interactions with those insects have been pretty unpleasant but hardly horrible enough to put that broken rage in Grumpy’s voice. And Dean can’t even begin to pair those squirming insects with the act implied by ‘breeder’, and Christ, is Sam ... can Sam be _allowing_ that kind of thing?

A moment later his chest gives a frustrated, pained pulse at how off guard the concept has caught him—Sam’s a powerful shell without a soul: he murders and tortures on a regular basis, there’s no reason to think he’d draw the line at rape. Dean’s nausea rises instantly, turning his mouth sour and hot with the extra burden of guilt that crashes down on him. He’s gripping the amulet tightly enough to bruise his hand _(Sam’ll be upset, he doesn’t like Dean hurting himself)_ , and now he brings it up to his chest in a useless attempt to ward off the devastating ache.

“And you,” Grumpy chokes out as tears stream down his face. “You, with that, that _thing_. I’ve seen the way you look at it, like some kind of—of lovesick whore.”

Dean shakes his head, opening his mouth to explain as his own tears start to fall, but of course he can’t—Sam took away his words, took everything. And anyway, there isn’t an explanation. There’s no excuse. He is what Grumpy’s saying—he’s that and worse.

“What does the Ravager call you? Dean? Well, I’ve got a better name for you, you fucking _Judas_.”

Dean flinches, knocking back against the glass again. He half-expects it to break and send him tumbling out into midair.

He wants it to break.

“Enough, Dave,” another voice says.

Dean swings his head toward the sound, stupidly hopeful that there’s some small measure of compassion or pity coming his way.

Instead, the voice continues, “That beetle bitch’ll be back any minute. Kill it and let’s go.”

So that’s it, then. Everything Dean’s done to maintain his sanity and his dignity and he’s going to be executed as a traitor to his own race. As something that doesn’t even deserve to be called human anymore. A second Judas.

He can’t tell, for a moment, whether the clenching pain in his chest is stronger than the relief flooding him at the promise of release.

Before he can make up his mind, he finds himself grabbed by one arm as Grumpy growls, “There’s time enough for it to face what it’s done.” Something sharp pricks at Dean’s throat—not quite breaking the skin, but threatening—and he’s shaken. “Open your eyes, Judas!”

Dean obeys, blinking rapidly to clear his vision, and finds a blur of faces ringing him. Superficial details are obscured by the wet clump of tears weighing down his lashes, but Dean has no trouble making out the expression they all share.

Disgust.

Hatred.

Loathing.

“Benji Harker,” Grumpy says, swinging Dean forward in front of the man Dean’s been thinking of as Doc. “He’s got a parasite waiting for him when we’re done here. Fucker rode him for half a year before the Ravager wanted him to clean up its mess. It made Benji watch while he butchered his family in their beds.”

Dean is jerked over to Bashful next. He’s never been within fifteen feet of the man before, but now that he’s standing close enough to feel his body heat, he can smell the sulfur pouring off of him in thick waves.

“Jess Webb,” Grumpy growls. “Got a beetle for an owner, likes to try out new weapons on its meat. Slows ‘em down inside first, so it can get a real good look on what happens when we die. Jess’s been running at a hundred and twenty for almost a year now, and he’s probably got another two to look forward to before he finishes cooking in his own juices.”

It goes on like that—the story behind Happy’s grin, Sneezy’s life as a human cock-fighter, Sleepy’s run-in with an irate maggot. When they get to Dopey, Grumpy makes the man—Ian White—open his mouth and show Dean the place where his tongue and teeth used to be until he was earmarked as a pet for a beetle. By then, of course, Dean’s horrified brain is working well enough to understand that Dopey—Ian—had his tongue cut off and his teeth pulled out because he kept biting down instead of submitting to his demonic master the way he was supposed to.

This is what Sam’s been letting go on behind the lines. This is what the conquered remnant of humanity has become—a collection of toys to be used, and broken, and finally discarded.

Sam did this.

Sam did this because of Dean.

By the time Grumpy tosses Dean back against the window again, Dean’s crying hard enough that he’s choking on his own snot. He coughs in a reflexive attempt to clear his windpipe, and then Grumpy has that sharp object _(knife, must be)_ back against his throat, ready to plunge forward and in. Ready to spill Dean’s blood out on the floor.

 _Yes,_ Dean thinks desperately, tilting his head back. _Yes, end it._

“In case you wonder where I got the pigsticker,” Grumpy snarls. “Singer gave it to me. One last delivery from him to you.”

Dean thought he was beyond the reach of further pain—he couldn’t conceive of feeling worse than he did after that list of crimes—but Grumpy’s words stab fresh agony through his chest and steal his breath. He keens, silently, and slumps into the man’s hold.

“Enjoy spreading your legs in Hell,” Grumpy says, and then there’s another spray of moisture on Dean’s face as the man spits on him again.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Dean readies himself for the sting of release.

It doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a flare of light and the sudden rush of heat. No screams. Not even the sound of flames. Just a room of swirling ash that slowly settles as Dean blinks at it through wet, tearing eyes.

Finally, after a long, stunned moment, Dean realizes what happened. The understanding shocks a bitter laugh out of him. Without his voice, it comes out as a chuff of air, deafeningly loud in the silent room.

Of course Sam—paranoid, possessive control freak that he is—would have some sort of protective ward on him. Of course he’d have a defense mechanism in place, ready to take out any possible threat to Dean’s well being before he could be harmed. Fuck, Sam isn’t even here and he just incinerated everyone in the room who wasn’t Dean.

And Dean is past submitting to that kind of thing. He’s done being saved for future twisting and pain. He’s not getting cheated of this, damn it.

Dropping to his knees, he fumbles blindly through the ash by his feet until his hands find something solid and cool. He cuts his finger on the blade—it’s sharp, it’ll slide in easily—and then corrects his grip with a flush of gratitude and lifts the knife. It isn’t anything he’s handled before—no weapon he’s used on a hunt, nothing he’s seen Bobby use. But it’s from Bobby, and he understands now that the man’s final missive wasn’t meant as a betrayal. It isn’t repudiation.

It’s a gift.

This is the last, kind act Bobby can do for him—the last thing he has to offer. A way out. An end.

 _Thank you,_ he thinks. _Oh God, Bobby, thank you thank you._

Getting a better hold on the handle, Dean positions the tip of the knife over his heart. He remembers to tilt it a little, turning it sideways so it’ll slip right through the bars of his ribs instead of getting stuck on the way in. As he takes what’s meant to be his final breath, a swirl of motion in the doorway brings his head up.

Dean meets Ruby’s wide-eyed, startled gaze and freezes for a single, heart-stopping moment. He feels caught out: terrified that she’ll tell on him and get someone else killed. It takes him a couple of seconds to work through his fear to the realization that he’ll be dead long before she tattles, that he won’t care, that it’ll be over, and then he pushes the knife forward.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean’s head hurts.

Dean’s head hurts and there are voices.

“—let this happen?”

“I _stopped_ this from happening, Sam.”

“He’s hurt!”

“I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to think! I don’t think his head hit the wall too hard ...”

“You don’t _think_ —get a fucking _doctor_ up here, Ruby!”

Dean stirs at the way that snarl presses against his skull. Something about the voice, or maybe about the golden-bright aftershocks it leaves in its wake, makes his head hurt even more. He doesn’t think he did much more than twitch, but hands land on his face instantly, cradling and insistent.

“Dean? Dean, baby, look at me.”

Sammy. Sam’s voice.

Dean makes an effort for his brother, fluttering his eyes open, and sees a blurry shape leaning over him. Those oversized hands—Sam’s hands, must be—paw at his face some more.

“Up here. Dean, c’mon, _focus_. Aw, Christ, you’re bleeding.”

Sam sounds miserable and frantic, and Dean flops a hand up, trying to pat his brother’s arm. Show that he’s all right, really. His head hurts a little, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. He’ll be up and around in a couple more minutes.

“Shhh, baby. Don’t move. Don’t move, okay? Can you just talk to me? Tell me where it hurts?”

 _Head,_ Dean tries to say, but nothing comes out. His mouth must not be working right.

Sam swears above him, and the next instant there are soft lips pressed against Dean’s—Sammy’s mouth on his—and there are times for kissing, but Dean’s pretty sure this isn’t one of them. He opens his mouth to point out as much and then hesitates as his brother’s tongue runs across his lips. Sam tastes sweet, like honey, and Dean laps at the taste instinctively. Warmth flows into his mouth and down his throat, where it sinks into the muscles and lingers.

Sam breaks the kiss while Dean is still processing that sensation and instantly demands, “Okay, talk to me. Where’re you hurt?”

Dean licks his lips first, chasing the last, lingering remnants of honeyed warmth, and then breathes, “Head. Hurts.”

“I know, baby,” Sam murmurs, petting his face with trembling fingers. “I’m gonna take care of it, okay? Sammy’s gonna take care of it. You just stay with me.”

But Dean’s tired, and he finds himself drifting away again.

There are more voices at some point after that, and bright lights in his eyes, and Sam shouting, “Because I can’t lick his fucking _brain_ , okay?” which strikes Dean as hilarious before his sense of humor slides into the same grey, dull blur that covers everything else. Except for his head, of course. His head has gone all rusted and red. Agonizing spikes of color.

Sam’s talking again, something about bringing an angel _(except he must have said angle, because angels aren’t real; even Dean knows that)_ upstairs, and someone else is arguing with him, and then Sam is yelling, Sam is _angry_ , and Dean moans, reaching out for his brother blindly. A hand catches his, lifts it up and presses it against a cheek fringed with shaggy, soft hair.

“S’mmy,” Dean slurs with a weak smile, and then drifts away again.

The next thing Dean knows, there are two hands holding his head in a vice grip, and a cool voice calling his name. A woman.

“Dean Winchester. Come back to me. You’re needed yet.”

She sounds nice, but Dean doesn’t really want to go with her. He’s looking for Sam. Sam’s around here somewhere, right? Sam’s waiting for him?

Then there’s a wash of blue, icy and agonizing, and Dean gasps, coming back to himself with a rush. His whole body is trembling with energy, his vision tinged with that brilliant blue at the corners as he struggles up into a sitting position on the couch. There’s a woman in front of him, and he knows instantly that she isn’t a demon because she’s bruised and bloodied and collared. But she’s also smiling, one hand resting lightly against the side of Dean’s face. Her eyes are as blue as the Caribbean and heartbreakingly sad.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” she says.

Dean opens his mouth—to ask who she is, or why she’s sorry, or maybe to offer to kick the ass of whoever did this to her—and then Sam is shoving her aside and gripping Dean’s face between his hands. His eyes are wide and frantic. Gold, burning irises.

Gold.

No.

Oh God no.

Tears sting Dean’s eyes and his breath speeds. He tosses his head, trying to get Sam off of him, and his brother’s power drops over his mind and body in a heavy, numbing blanket.

“Dean,” Sam breathes, stroking his cheekbones. “Fuck, Dean, I thought I’d lost you.”

He yanks Dean up against his chest, clutching him tightly enough to make Dean’s ribs crack alarmingly. Dean sits unresistingly in his brother’s hold, restrained by both the golden throb of Sam’s power and the iron bands of Sam’s arms. He’s aware, vaguely, that there are other people in the room—no, not people really, not here, but other beings.

Sam doesn’t give any command, verbal or otherwise, that Dean catches, but the onlookers get the message anyway. Dean can hear them leaving—softening murmur of voices as they exit and shut the door behind them, leaving Dean alone with his brother.

He doesn’t know how long Sam holds him like that, but eventually Sam sucks in a deep breath and loosens his hold. Laying Dean back down on the couch, he strokes a hand down Dean’s cheek and drops his forehead against Dean’s. This close, it’s impossible to miss the shimmering streaks on Sam’s face—tear tracks—and the desperate fear and relief Dean finds in his brother’s eyes make his chest ache uncomfortably even through the power-imposed calm.

“You okay, baby?” Sam whispers, his voice wet and hoarse. The blanket of power smothering Dean’s body and stilling his limbs falls away with the question, leaving him free to answer, although his emotions are still hidden on the other side of a golden wall.

From the bits and pieces he can catch glimpses of, Dean’s pretty sure that’s a good thing.

Anyway, he doesn’t think Sam’s asking about that, and Sam being this upset is never a good thing, so he nods.

“Your head doesn’t hurt?” Sam checks, lifting up slightly and tilting Dean’s head for him. The way that his brother is peering at the top of his skull makes Dean suspect he doesn’t want to know what it looked like a few minutes ago. Before the girl with the blue eyes came.

That bitch. Oh, that bitch. She brought him _back_.

“Thought I’d lost you,” Sam says, and he’s sobbing now, messy and uncontrolled. “Fuck, Dean, what happened?”

Even on the other side of Sam’s artificial wall, the memories of his attempt to end things and the encounter with the workmen leading up to it leave Dean’s chest tight and aching. “It hurt too much,” he answers softly. “What they said, it—I didn’t realize—”

“What?” There’s wrath in Sam’s eyes now, lashing and hot enough to make Dean feel feverish. Sam’s power slithers over his skin, directionless. “What _who_ said?”

“The men. They—”

The rest of Dean’s words are lost on a choked gasp as Sam’s mind shoves into his. The wall holding off his emotions shreds with the contact, leaving him awash in bleak despair and guilt and humiliated shame while his brother takes everything in directly. Dean’s own emotions are too painful to deal with right now—too intense—and so he shoves them aside out of self-defense and does his best to focus on Sam.

His brother’s face shifts with the knowledge he’s pulling from Dean’s head: flicking its way through a bewildering array of expressions as Sam relives the confrontation. As then-Dean readies himself for the end, Sam’s eyes finally settle, darkening to tawny amber. The vast, hollow sorrow Dean sees there fills him with an almost overwhelming desire to pull his brother close and kiss him until his eyes are lemon light and shining.

They called Sam names too. Called him the Ravager. They called him a thing. An it. Inhuman and unwanted.

Just like Dean.

After what feels like an ocean of fury and grief, Sam releases Dean’s mind and Dean sinks back into the couch, breathless and struggling with the jumble of emotion in his chest.

“You really did,” Sam breathes, face twisted into a devastated mask. “I thought Ruby was lying, but you really did. You really tried to kill yourself.”

The memory of Sam’s threat—of what he promised the last time he caught Dean hurting himself—flashes through Dean’s head and cuts right through the disorder, leaving stark fear in its wake.

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking straight,” he babbles, grabbing his brother’s arm. “I—I’m sorry. I won’t. I won’t do it again, I promise. I fucking swear, okay?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to make sure you mean it this time?” Sam yells.

As Dean tries to come up with an answer that doesn’t involve anyone else dying, he sees Sam still. Sees his brother’s eyes sharpen and knows that Sam has just remembered his promise as well.

The panic flooding him ramps up, shooting adrenaline through his body, and as Sam’s expression starts the short slide from fear to fury, Dean grabs the back of his brother’s neck and yanks him down into a kiss. For the first time, Sam is stiff against him, and not in the way Dean wants him to be.

 _C’mon,_ Dean thinks desperately, tugging him closer. _C’mon, Sam._

He makes his mouth as wet and hungry as he knows how, sliding his own tongue enthusiastically around his brother’s reluctant one. Sam thaws slightly in the face of Dean’s eagerness and, after a moment, he starts to kiss back. It isn’t anything like the kisses Dean’s used to—it’s grudging, like Sam doesn’t want to respond but just can’t help himself. The rhythm is all off, Dean too feverish in his attempts to redirect his brother’s attention and Sam reluctantly slow. It’s an awkward combination, and Dean can tell that Sam is still focused more on his promised slaughter than on Dean, which makes him even more frantic to make this work.

He realizes suddenly that Sam is leaning over him, one knee propping him up between Dean’s legs. Grabbing his brother’s ass, he yanks Sam down against him and grinds their crotches together. Sam stirs against him, more genuinely this time, and Dean can feel control of the kiss starting to slip away from him as Sam surges forward.

Oh thank God.

Then, unexpectedly, his brother breaks away and pushes up off the couch.

“Goddamn it, Dean!” Sam yells, dragging a furious hand through his hair as he paces away. “Stop playing the whore!”

“I’m not!” Dean yells back while scrambling up into a sitting position. “I _need_ this, Sam, I—” He stops abruptly, the rest of the words caught in his throat by the unexpected realization that he’s telling the truth.

Dean’s confrontation with the workers has brought home a few truths that Dean has been deliberately ignoring, not the least of which is the fact that he’s already been written off as a lost cause by everyone else. Hell, even Bobby has given up on him: the gift of the knife makes that painfully clear. The only person on earth who still gives a shit about Dean is Sam. Sam, who has proven over and over again that he loves Dean, and needs him. Sam, who murdered his own soul in a desperate attempt to keep Dean safe.

Because Dean’s the only one Sam has left.

It’s taken him a while to own up to it, but Dean’s finally figuring out that Sam’s the only one he has left as well. He wasn’t ever Mr. Popularity to begin with, but the thing that he’s been dreading at the back of his mind all of his life has finally happened.

He’s been cast aside. Discarded. The humans don’t want him on their side anymore: don’t even see him as one of them. Instead, they see him as some kind of poisonous whore. A traitor. A Judas.

But Sam wants him.

And fuck, but Dean wants his little brother back. He wants—he _needs_ that one thing. That one, tiny strand of connection and acceptance and love. And he’s so goddamned tired of pretending otherwise.

Sam is staring at Dean like he’s never seen him before, eyes narrowed and cautious. He doesn’t look at all convinced by Dean’s declaration, but he must sense some of what Dean is feeling because he isn’t pacing anymore either. He’s just standing there waiting for Dean to continue.

It takes Dean a few minutes to get his voice working well enough, but finally he whispers, “You’re all I have left.”

Each word feels like it’s carving its way free from his chest, leaving him empty and bloody inside, but that’s nothing new. Maybe the ache has never been this deep before, but Dean’s more accustomed to it than he used to be. He can handle it. Piece of cake.

“You’re all I have left, Sammy,” he repeats. “Everyone else is—you saw, man. You saw what they.”

Sam’s mouth tightens, and Dean realizes that he doesn’t want to be reminding his brother of that right now.

“I need you,” he says instead, switching tracks. “I need you to make me feel good. Just. Fuck, please, Sam, let me fucking kiss yo—sss!” The last word becomes a harsh inhalation of breath as heat slithers through his back.

Sam’s eyes sharpen and he strides forward, grabbing Dean’s shoulder and wrenching him forward, leaving him with his nose smushed somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. Dean wants to pull away, wants to complain, but he knows what’s happening and he knows why and he knows that Sam’s going to look whether he wants his brother to see or not.

His resignation doesn’t make the position any less uncomfortable, though, and it just gets worse when Sam yanks the hoodie up, trapping Dean’s head and arms. Heat continues to slide through his skin, making Dean’s muscles twitch. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it does feel really fucking weird, and Dean can’t quite smother a groan.

“Shh,” Sam says absently, rubbing a hand over Dean’s spine.

Dean tenses, waiting for the images to come, or the arousal, but nothing happens. It’s as though the tattoo has disappeared instead of mutated again. Then Sam strokes again, more slowly, and this time Dean feels it—a phantom heartbeat overlapping his own inside of his chest. He breathes in and feels Sam’s lungs fill. It’s worse than the collar was—more intense—but right now it’s what Dean needs. Something to ground him, something to link him to Sam and prove that he’s still worth something—that there’s still a faint glimmer of light in his ruined, damned life.

So it’s hellfire. So fucking what.

“You’re beautiful,” Sam breathes, still tracing over the new lines of the tattoo, but Dean’s getting sick of having his forehead pressed against his knees. His lower back is strained and stressed and feels like it’s about to start spasming.

“Sam,” he grunts. “Lemme up.”

Sam doesn’t argue, but he does take the opportunity to finish tugging the hoodie off. Dean helps as he sits up, lifting his arms to make it easier to get the bulky fabric over his head. Sam swears as Dean’s back is revealed, and his hands are back on Dean almost immediately, rubbing everywhere they can reach.

“Fuck,” Dean breathes, arching into the touch.

Beside him, Sam lets out a shaky laugh. Dean glances over at the sound, one side of his mouth already quirked in a weary smile, and Sam kisses him. Sam kisses him with the self-assured, possessive strength that Dean was trying to coax out of him before and it feels just as good as Dean knew it would. He opens his own mouth wider, kissing back as Sam gets one hand on Dean’s lower back and the other on Dean’s hip and eases him down and back against the couch.

Sam follows immediately, mapping out Dean’s mouth as he drapes himself over Dean’s body and presses him down into the cushions. For the first time in a long time, the solid barrier of his body doesn’t offer anything but comfort, trapping Dean into a close, intimate place where there’s nothing but him and Sam; nothing but the growing heat between them, just his mouth and Sam’s. Just Sam’s hands on his lower back and his side, and his own hands wandering anywhere they can reach on Sam’s body. It’s been a while since he did this—since he touched Sam instead of the other way around—and fuck, he forgot how hot it gets Sam: how easy it is to make Sam squirm and groan helplessly against Dean’s mouth.

“Too many clothes,” Dean mumbles into the kiss.

Sam laughs—more open this time, unfettered and as broad as the Kansas sky—and Dean didn’t realize how much he missed that sound. How much he missed this.

Sam releases him in order to sit back on his heels, one knee planted on either side of Dean’s body as he yanks his jacket off. Dean has his hands on his brother’s stomach before Sam has done more than grip the hem of his shirt, and as Sam draws it up and off, he follows in the wake of the fabric until he reaches Sam’s nipples. Then he digs in, scratching the sensitive nubs the way he knows Sam likes and getting another laugh in return. Breathier this time, and a little shaky, but still full of wonder and sunlight.

“Fuck, _Dean_ ,” Sam whispers, diving down again to reclaim Dean’s mouth.

There’s no talking for a while then, just the wet sound of their mouths moving together, and the muted slide of hands on skin, and the friction of Sam’s jeans on Dean’s sweats as they rub up against one another. Finally, when Dean is starting to shake a little under the mind-numbing waves of pleasure, Sam breaks away from all the kissing to ask, “Can I?”

Dean’s confused enough by his brother’s sudden need for conversation that he can’t think of anything to say, instead leaning up and trying to get at Sam’s mouth again.

“Dean,” Sam says, ducking out of the way and pushing Dean back onto the couch with one hand.

Dean has a moment of panic that he’s leaving, but then Sam’s hips roll in a way that tells him his brother isn’t going anywhere. Sam does it a second time and the rocking pressure sends heat through Dean’s veins and forces a moan from him.

“You gotta tell me,” Sam demands. “Oh, fuck, please tell me yes.”

 _Yeah,_ Dean thinks. _Oh, hell yeah._

But even as he thinks it, he looks up into Sam’s golden, gleaming eyes, and everything slips to the side. He sees blood. He hears screams. Tastes copper. He remembers, suddenly and vividly, being held down while his brother forced the yellow-eyed demon’s power inside of him. Remembers being tainted and sullied.

The arousal flooding him dampens, turning to fear and disgust and sorrow.

Sam stills on top of him. “Dean? Baby?”

“I can’t,” Dean breathes. He wants to cry and can’t manage it. “Fuck, Sammy, I can’t.”

He expects Sam to be mad, to yell, but Sam looks more concerned—yeah, a little annoyed by the whole blue balls angle Dean is working, but he’s still with Dean. Still listening and not tossing his power around or running off to throw a bloody temper tantrum.

With a serious expression, he cups Dean’s cheek with one hand. “Talk to me.”

It’s an order, and the first one since Sam brought him here that Dean doesn’t mind following.

“I love you,” he confesses. The words are surprisingly easy to get out. “You’re it for me, Sammy. Good or bad, it doesn’t—it doesn’t matter. There’s just you. And I—I get that.”

Sam’s eyes brighten at the admission, but he doesn’t smile, probably sensing that there’s a ‘but’ on the way. “I know you do,” he says, and from the stray flicker of power over his back, Dean knows that his brother is thinking of the tattoo: of whatever new shape the black lines have carved for themselves.

“But I can’t just,” Dean continues, voice going thick and choked with the weight of the emotions in his chest. “I can’t ignore everything that’s happened. What you’ve done, to the world, to me. To yourself. I can’t just decide to switch teams mid-game.”

“They rejected you,” Sam replies, frowning a little. Dean can’t tell if he’s angry on Dean’s behalf or if he’s trying to understand. “That man, he—he fucking _spit_ on you, Dean. They tried to kill you. The ‘good guys’? They don’t want you anymore.”

“I know,” Dean says. And he does know, he does, but saying it out loud still twists the knife in his chest that little bit deeper. Makes the ache of rejection that little bit sharper. “But it’s not that simple, Sam. Because I still want them.”

Sam is quiet, and Dean can tell he’s struggling to accept that statement. When he feels the impulse to reach out and rub a hand along his brother’s side in encouragement, he doesn’t fight it. Sam’s skin is soft against his fingertips. Warmer than he remembers.

After a long moment, Sam says, “But you want me.”

“I _want_ to want you,” Dean corrects, and Sam’s face scrunches with confusion.

Dean gets that it’s confusing. Hell, he couldn’t tell the difference between the two himself until he was hovering on the point of saying yes—of taking that final plunge. The two sides of this particular coin are close enough that he probably could have gone through with it, as long as he lost himself in the sensations. As long as he didn’t let himself think.

The fallout would have come later, as soft and as deadly as nuclear winter.

“You’re going to try, though,” Sam says slowly after another pause. “From now on, instead of fighting me, you’re going to try.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees.

Bobby’s face appears in his mind for an instant, disappointed and disapproving, but Dean shoves it away. Bobby doesn’t get to pass judgment on him after he washed his hands of Dean, and anyway, Dean honestly can’t see any other option. He can’t go back to losing himself a chunk at a time—not after that brief, false renewal of hope. If there was anything to hope for, maybe he’d try to hold on just a little longer, but it’s been made quite clear to him that the promised help _(promised in a dream, serves him right for listening in the first place)_ isn’t coming.

Sam stares down at him a moment longer and then slowly—almost shyly—smiles. Dean looks up at his brother’s expression and can’t decide whether his heart is pounding so loudly out of anticipation or dread. Just a few hours ago, he would have come down on the dread side of things without hesitation: would have thrust the possibility of anticipation away as wrong, as something he isn’t allowed to have.

Now, he thinks maybe he just needs to make an attitude adjustment.

“You wanna try something now?” Sam asks. His voice is a caress, power sliding out and skimming along Dean’s skin, and Dean’s heart kicks in his chest like a frightened rabbit’s. For a few seconds. Then he wrestles it back under control, staring up into those golden, changed eyes and telling himself he sees Sammy there.

“What’d you have in mind?” If he sounds a little breathless, he guesses they can blame it on excitement.

In answer, Sam leans closer and gives a slow, teasing roll of his hips. Unsurprisingly enough, Dean’s cock wilted while they were having their little heart-to-heart, but it revives quickly enough now. Then again, his cock was never really confused about whether or not it wants Sam. Dean’s head and heart are the stubborn, problematical portions of his anatomy.

“Just this?” Dean checks, even as his hands are already settling at Sam’s waist.

“If you’re up for it,” Sam answers. But the smugness in his voice says he already knows what Dean’s answer will be, and before Dean has a chance to respond his brother is contorting himself so that he can lick a lingering, worshipful line from Dean’s stomach up to his chest. Power spikes in the wake of Sam’s tongue, sinking into Dean and easing the worst of the anxious guilt that’s getting in his way.

It’s something he would have fought before, but now Dean just lets it happen and relaxes deeper into the moment.

“Okay,” he rasps, nodding. “Yeah, let’s—” and then Sam is kissing him again.

He keeps the kisses gentle at first, the rocking movements of his hips slow and almost incidental. It isn’t until Dean is completely relaxed that Sam becomes more demanding, rocking and thrusting down against him with firmer pulses. Dean’s arousal is still tainted with fear around the edges, like an infection, but it’s the closest to peace that he’s come in a long time and he concentrates on that. He concentrates on how good Sam is making his body feel.

Then Sam squirms his hands between Dean’s back and the couch, setting off the tattoo, and Dean jerks as the connection opens between them.

In the back of his mind, he remembers how it felt when Sam forced his way inside before, when he was angry. How it felt like he was trying to consume Dean: to possess him through and through, to possess everything. He remembers how much it hurt, how inevitable it seemed that Dean’s mind would break under the strain.

This isn’t anything like that invasion. This is easy and soft: a gradual sinking sensation that leaves Dean with the impression that Sam is pressed up everywhere beneath his skin, not covetous at all but cherishing. Protective. Loving. The thrill of alarm and the queasiness deep in Dean’s gut are still there—Sam’s eyes are gold not hazel, and whatever else he is, he’s still the Boy King, still a murderer—but Dean thinks he could get used to this.

He thinks he might come to crave it.

‘You aren’t ready for that,’ Sam told him. ‘Not yet.’

Dean still isn’t ready, but he knows he’s closer.

“So fucking beautiful,” Sam pants, moving faster, and Dean makes himself stop thinking.

It isn’t anything pretty or elegant: just the two of them rutting on the couch hard enough and fast enough to scrape the legs against the floor. It’s uncoordinated and primal, and Dean feels like he’s on fire, like Sam is oil sliding over his skin and feeding the blaze. He opens his mouth on a pant and finds Sam there, pouring in and coating him with power and desire and love, inside and out.

 **That’s it,** Sam purrs inside his head as he kisses the breath from Dean’s lungs. **That’s it, baby. So close, you’re so close.**

Then Dean isn’t just close but _there_ , spilling with a cry that’s muffled by his brother’s mouth. Sam continues to ride his body for a few minutes, the friction spreading Dean’s come around inside of his sweats in a way that isn’t at all comfortable. Dean’s had worse, though, and he tangles a hand in Sam’s hair, keeping their mouths pressed together while Sam ruts against him and gets himself off.

When his brother finally climaxes, it’s with an uncontrolled lash of power that shoots blindly across the room. From the direction of the window, something cracks. Sam stiffens on top of Dean, straining and gasping, and then collapses. Their chests slide together through a slick sheen of sweat. Their breaths mingle as Sam rests his forehead against Dean’s, lips just brushing in something that isn’t quite a kiss.

Eventually, Dean murmurs, “I think you broke the window again.”

Sam huffs out an amused breath. “I’m blaming you. Can’t fucking control myself around you.” He kisses Dean again, deeply, and then pulls back to ask, “Want to move this to the bed?”

Dean thinks about spooning with Sam like this, with his cock sticky with come and sweat drying on his chest, and his stomach gives a nervous flip. He feels trapped again suddenly, feels like prey. First panic attack of many, probably.

Jesus Christ, he can’t quite believe he just let that happen.

“Bathroom first?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. “I want to shower.”

Sam grins, rubbing his nose against Dean’s skin. “I think we can do that.”

“Alone,” Dean corrects, and then holds his breath as Sam stills.

There’s no warning pulse of anger, though. There isn’t even any real disappointment in Sam’s eyes when he lifts his head to look at Dean.

“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” he asks, moving one hand up to brush a stray drop of sweat from Dean’s temple. He isn’t offering any violence, isn’t being overtly sexual, but he also isn’t moving away, and Dean’s heart beats faster.

“Please, Sammy,” he whispers.

Sam’s eyes darken momentarily—just a flicker of some unidentifiable emotion—and then, wordlessly, he climbs off of Dean to stand next to the couch, where he holds out his hand in clear offer. Dean considers ignoring the gesture—he doesn’t want to touch Sam right now, he wants to be alone so he can think through this properly—but it isn’t worth hurting Sam over, and Dean thinks that his brother is safe _(sated)_ enough right now. Sure enough, Sam doesn’t play any tricks when he hauls Dean up: just gets him on his feet and then releases him again.

“Be sure to wash the blood out of your hair,” he says, hands going down to the buttons of his jeans as he turns away.

Dean glances at the arm of the couch at the reminder—glances at the place where his head was resting when he woke up. The fabric there is dark with blood and flecked with something else—little specks that might be fragments of bone, or maybe brain matter—and Dean’s stomach turns as he quickly looks away again.

So close. He was so very, very close.

But that isn’t something he’s thinking about anymore, so he shifts his thoughts onto more productive, optimistic paths—thinking about Sam, about what he can salvage rather than what has been lost—and heads into the bathroom to get clean.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Dean steps out of the shower an hour later, he’s mostly calm again. The shower itself was a nausea-inducing horror, of course. He spent the whole time chasing his logic around in his head: trying to retrace the steps that brought him here, to see where he went wrong, where he lost his way. He kept coming up blank.

It wasn’t any one thing, he thinks as he dries himself off, but a series of baby steps. All of his supports knocked out from under him one by one, all of the ties to his old life cut away strand by strand. And Sam everywhere he turned, Sam loving him and wanting him and needing him. Sam constant and steady and utterly irresistible.

Dean glances at the mirror again, idly at first and then, with a slight frown, more intently. He turns to face it directly, dropping the towel and standing there naked. His eyes travel up and down his reflection, assessing.

He doesn’t look any different than he did this morning. Same scars, same bowed legs. Same faint line of hair leading down to his dick. Same sensual, troublesome mouth and smattering of freckles. Same green, green eyes. Same too long, slightly tousled hair.

Gingerly, Dean turns and angles his back toward the mirror. His breath catches as the tattoo comes into view—he hasn’t seen it since its first incarnation: hasn’t wanted to. Now, for the first time, he sees that it hasn’t just changed but spread—there are more lines now: the thicker curls that decorated him before have split into thousands of thin offshoots, and the whole thing has transformed into a tangled, delicate mess of curves and jagged spikes. Dean recognizes a symbol or two amidst the disorder, but taken as a whole, it’s way too complex to decipher.

Dean’s never seen a binding this complicated, not ever. He’d be willing to bet no one has.

He expects the claustrophobic panic to return, but instead the confirmation that escape is futile and always has been—Bobby never would have been able to undo this, even if Dean was somehow able to get specs to him—settles him further. Dean doesn’t even bother with a robe as he opens the door and heads out into the main room.

Sam is waiting for him in their bed, his hair damp _(must have gone downstairs for his own shower)_ and all but bouncing up and down with eagerness. He’s naked under the sheets, Dean’s sure of it, but he doesn’t even glance at the wardrobe before lifting the covers up and sliding in. Sam probably wouldn’t be upset with him for needing a layer of cloth between them tonight, and Dean has to admit that the thought of getting a clean pair of sweats out of the wardrobe is tempting, but.

But.

If he’s trying this, then he’s goddamned well trying it.

Of course, all of his determination doesn’t keep him from tensing when Sam pulls him close and curls around him. The position leaves Sam’s soft cock pushed up against Dean’s ass, leaves the tattoo flush with Sam’s chest. Dean’s heart skips a couple of beats as it adjusts to his brother’s rhythm, the connection between them forced wide by all that skin-to-skin contact. Sam’s emotions spill into him, filling Dean with love and contentment and happiness while Sam’s hands smooth over Dean’s chest and stomach. Sam noses at the back Dean’s neck—his spot, long neglected.

“Shh, baby,” he whispers. “Not gonna hurt you.”

With effort, Dean manages to get most of his muscles to unclench. Now that he’s here, he just wants to sleep—to go away from here for a while and maybe find the blue-eyed version of his brother, tell the fucker off for being a lying liar who lies—but he’s facing the wall with the picture window _(cracked, just like Dean knew it would be)_ where he almost died, and there’s a smear of blood about three feet up from the floor. The sight is making Dean think unpleasant thoughts, despite the warmth of Sam’s love inside of him.

“Ruby used her power on me, didn’t she?” he says finally.

Behind him, it’s his brother’s turn to go rigid. The connection between them dims and the flow of Sam’s emotions cuts off—a deliberate move on his brother’s part, Dean guesses. There are any number of reasons Sam might want to be opaque right now.

“Yes,” Sam says after a few moments, and Dean might not be able to feel his brother’s emotions anymore, but Sam’s voice carries more than a hint of violence.

Dean still isn’t Ruby’s biggest fan—she’s a demon, she’s never going to be his favorite person—but as the bad guys go, he guesses that Sam was right and she’s mostly tolerable. Besides, he’s gotten used to having someone to hang out with during the day while Sam’s out.

“She probably saved my life.”

“I know,” Sam answers. He shifts a hand up and rubs his fingers over Dean’s heart. “When I got home, you were bleeding here. Just a little. She knocked you out before you managed much more than a surface cut.” He presses a kiss to Dean’s nape.

Dean sort of wants to ask about the blue-eyed woman who healed him, find out whether she’s at all connected to the blue-eyed Sam in his dreams, but he knows better than to indulge his curiosity. He’s given up fighting his feelings for his brother, but that doesn’t mean that he has forgotten how dangerous Sam is. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t worried about what Sam might do if he found out about the dreams.

If he ever found out what Dean’s been doing _with_ the Sam from his dreams.

Sam’s hand splays wide over Dean’s heart. He nudges his nose just behind Dean’s ear. “Baby?” he murmurs.

Dean’s heart flutters a little at the hesitation in his brother’s voice. He wishes futilely that Sam weren’t blocking the connection between them: then at least he’d have some vague idea of what to expect.

“Yeah, Sammy.”

“You remember what I promised I would do if you tried to hurt yourself again.”

Dean’s stomach tightens forcefully enough to leave him breathless. As images of tiny, broken bodies flicker through his head, the sensation swells up through his chest and into his throat, where it forms a painful, thick lump.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, squeezing his eyes against the sting of tears.

“Aren’t you going to beg me not to?”

It’s impossible to tell what Sam’s looking for. Impossible to guess what answer he wants.

“Would it do any good?” Dean asks carefully.

“Maybe.” Sam’s voice is toneless—no way to tell if he’s lying or not.

Dean considers it—he thinks about getting down on his knees and begging, pleading with Sam not to do this, not to punish innocent kids for Dean’s fault. And if he thought there was even the slightest chance it would work, he’d do it in a heartbeat. He’d do whatever Sam asked of him, if only his brother would be lenient just this once.

But Sam isn’t going to listen. After all, he warned Dean—told him exactly what would happen—and Dean picked up the knife anyway. Hell, this isn’t even Dean’s first transgression, not that he’s going to tell Sam that.

“No,” he says finally. The muscles in his throat spasm around the lump, agonizing, and he has to struggle to swallow as the first, hot tears run down his face to wet the pillow.

“Even though you know I’m going to do it?” Sam presses. “You know I’m going to bring kids up here and butcher them while you watch?”

“Christ, can’t you just—do we have to _talk_ about it?”

“Just answer the question.”

“ _Yes_ , okay?” Dean spits. He’s crying in earnest now—silently, but he’s pretty sure Sam can tell anyway.

Sam’s hand shifts down from his heart to rub small circles into his lower stomach. “Would you let me kiss you after?” His lips brush the shell of Dean’s ear, teasing. “Would you kiss me back?”

Dean hates himself for it so much that his whole body aches, but he finally rasps, “Yeah.”

It’s the truth. The wretched, shameful truth. He’ll probably yell when the time for Sam to fulfill his promise comes, and he’ll have to be restrained during, and he’ll cry when it’s over, and he’ll _want_ to hate Sam, but ... but he’s going to fold just like he always does.

After all, it isn’t like he hasn’t seen Sam murder children before.

Sam kisses the nape of Dean’s neck, slow and lingering, and then bites down delicately. Dean shudders as his brother sucks a bruise into the skin, marking him, and then winces when Sam pulls off. A second later, his brother breathes out, deliberately sending a gust of air over the sore, wet flesh. Sam is still rubbing his stomach, urging him to be quiet and calm, and Dean shuts his eyes and lets himself sink back against his brother’s chest. Sam holds him close while he cries, stroking him and peppering his throat with wet, gentle kisses, until Dean, exhausted, falls still and silent again.

Then he noses Dean’s cheek and says, “Okay. You can have their lives.”

Dean’s eyes open at that, and he stares sightlessly in the direction of the picture window. “What?”

“You deserve something nice,” Sam answers with a yawn. “After today.”

Dean doesn’t ... Dean doesn’t know what to do with that. Hope and shame and fear and sorrow war in his chest, confusing, and in the end, what comes out is, “I thought I wasn’t a whore.”

“Don’t be stupid, Dean,” Sam scoffs. “I’m not paying you: I’m giving you a present. I was going to bring Bobby up for a visit, but I thought, given the circumstances, that you’d like this better. If you want something else, of course, I can always—”

“No,” Dean blurts before Sam can say anything else. “No, I want them. Of course I fucking want them.”

“Okay then,” Sam replies, pulling him a little closer and leaning forward over Dean’s shoulder enough for Dean to see his brother’s face out of the corner of his eye. “What do you say?”

It takes a moment, but Dean figures out what his brother angling for.

“Thank you, Sammy,” he says. His lips feel weird around the words: numb with mingled relief and shock.

“You’re welcome, baby,” Sam answers, stealing a quick kiss before easing back down against the pillow. “Now try to get some sleep. I’m thinking of waking you up early tomorrow.” He rests his forehead against the back of Dean’s head, nose pushed up against the fresh hickey on the back of Dean’s neck and making him ache pleasantly. “Gonna kiss you awake,” Sam announces, his voice lazy and contented. “Just like Sleeping Beauty.”

It’s something to dread. Or possibly to look forward to, if Dean can manage to rework his hang-ups regarding the whole apocalypse thing.

The room is silent for a few minutes while Dean contemplates what their new arrangement is going to mean for him—while he wonders if it’s going to make things easier or harder—and then Sam says, “Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

The words carry an unspoken plea, Sam’s need as transparent as ever, and Dean sighs. Closing his eyes, he covers his brother’s hand on his stomach with his own. After a brief pause where he struggles with himself, he pushes their combined hands lower. Sam eagerly accepts the offered permission the way Dean knew he would, gripping Dean’s limp cock and holding it loosely in his hand.

They used to do this sometimes—by accident at first, when they were both too exhausted to keep going and fell asleep in the middle of things, and then, after that, with more deliberation. Sam used to like this, when he was feeling particularly vulnerable. He liked the depth of trust evident in Dean’s ability to fall asleep with his dick nestled in Sam’s hand. Dean never minded it either, although his own fondness for the habit stemmed from the benefits of waking up horny and having Sam already in position to take care of his morning wood.

Now, as the touch spreads warmth through Dean’s body, he suddenly isn’t sure that this was such a great idea. Everything else aside, it’s been a long time since his dick’s been touched, and he doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to go to sleep like this the way he used to.

But the connection is reopening inside of him—Sam’s emotions echoing into him through the tattoo—and the relieved, joyous gratitude he finds there is more than enough repayment for a few sleepless hours. Dean’s mind tries to tell him this is wrong—this isn’t Sam, he can’t seriously be doing this with a mass murderer—and he ruthlessly shuts down that train of thought. Instead, he focuses on how huge Sam’s hands are and how tentative—how unsure—their shared heartbeat is.

“It’s okay,” he says.

He isn’t sure whether he’s trying to reassure himself or Sam, but their heartbeat steadies with the words and Sam’s fingers shift into a tighter cage around his cock. It isn’t quite fondling, but then again it isn’t exactly innocent either, and Dean arches into the touch. As one of Sam’s fingertips stretches down to rub along his balls, he shifts a little further onto his back, careful not to break the connection between them, and spreads his legs, giving his brother room to explore if he feels like it.

Then, because he knows Sam’s waiting for it—because this exercise in trust is good but not quite enough—he says, “Love you too, Sammy.”

God help him, it’s the truth.


End file.
